


Saving Victoria Chase (again and again and again)

by cinnamonsnaps



Category: Life Is Strange, Life Is Strange (Video Game)
Genre: Comedy, F/F, Fluff, No Storm, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-06-23
Updated: 2017-06-14
Packaged: 2018-04-05 20:49:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 45,977
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4194426
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cinnamonsnaps/pseuds/cinnamonsnaps
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For one snobbish perfectionist, Victoria sure does attract a lot of everyday accidents.<br/>It's a thankless job, saving Victoria Chase, but <i>somebody's</i> gotta do it.</p><p>set in a vague no-storm au where max has more time to explore her new powers!</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Waterbottle

**Author's Note:**

> okay so first a couple songs which i think max would really like!!! recommended listening for this chapter:  
> [let down - radiohead](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Z_NvVMUcG8)  
> [again & again - the bird and the bee](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TMy6X5cQul8) (such a maxtoria song!!!!!!!!)
> 
> idk whether ill add chapters. maybe

The first incident happened while Max was waiting outside of her English class for the substitute teacher to hurry up and teach already. It didn't seem like the kind of day weird things could happen on (it never did) - the kind of day that slowly stretched out under the sun and stored heat up to release when night came, the kind of day when light was sluggish and heavy like syrup, when nobody had much energy, when it seemed that the whole world was asleep despite being awake.  
Life had been quiet, for a while. Chloe was still the same old rebellious teenager. Guns had been floating around vaguely. The time powers were definitely still in action, but that was also growing into something resembling normal.  
All the drama, all the strangeness and the weirdness: it all seemed very far away at that moment.  
Max felt sleepy in her spot in the queue by the door to the classroom. She felt like she could lean her head back and sleep rough against the wall - as did a few of her classmates, who looked just as exhausted from the gentle warmth of the corridor. Arcadia Bay was incubating, slowly languishing under a heat lamp. The corridor was quiet and breathless. There was a respectful hush.  
Until the doors at the far end of the corridor opened with a snap.   
"- think he is," rang Victoria Chase's distinctive voice down the corridor. Max frowned a little and tried to sink further back into the wall, sleepy mood banished, as she walked closer and closer accompanied by her two cronies. "He can say all the shit he likes about me. He must just be really desperate from all the action he isn't getting - no wonder he's so jacked up all the time when he can't get it together long enough to-"  
  
What happened next was a complicated mess of circumstance. Max nearly blinked and missed it.   
  
Victoria tripped over a seemingly normal patch of linoleum, a bottle of water she had been carrying flying out and shooting an arc of water while she herself fell to the floor in a mess of limbs and Louboutins, the water hitting the girl beside Max and soaking her top so, reflexively, her elbow came up and away and towards Max's face -  
Impulsively, Max raised her hand to shield herself from the elbow and -  
  
<<<<<<<<<<<  
  
Until the doors at the far end of the corridor opened with a snap.  
"- think he is," rang Victoria Chase's distinctive voice down the corridor. Max swore under her breath as she realised what had happened. Right, Victoria tripped and some water spilled, resulting in a little accidental rewind due to an automatic face block. Pros: no black eye or bleeding nose, and she could save the girl next to her from becoming soaked.  
Cons: Max now had to stop Victoria from tripping up. Damn.   
(Okay, that was a little cruel... while Victoria was an ass, she didn't really deserve any purposeful bodily harm.)  
Now Max saw the bump on the linoleum caused by an air bubble which would unbalance Victoria if she came closer, which she was indeed doing. Running out of ideas, Max did the first thing which came to mind, which was jump out in front of Victoria and try to warn her.   
"Wait, Victoria, don't walk over that spot - it's dangerous."  
Victoria, somewhat understandably, fixed Max an incredulous glare so withering that Max was sure she felt the paint peeling off the wall behind her.  
"Um, right," said Victoria, looking at her cronies - Taylor and, uh, whatever her name was, shit Max good job at remembering names - "I'm sure. Like what, are you that hung up on trying to become friends with me that you'd warn me about some little snag on the floor? Can anybody say lesbian? Looks like desperation is a contagious disease around here. Move it, Caulfield."  
Victoria stepped around Max, shouldering her roughly as she went past, and Max stood in the same spot feeling the eyes of her fellow English classmates fixed on her cementing her humiliation. Fuck. That had not been a good plan - there was no way Victoria would just accept Max's help like that.   
With a deep frown, Max raised her hand.  
  
<<<<<<<<<<<  
  
Until the doors at the far end of the corridor opened with a snap.  
"- think he is," rang Victoria Chase's distinctive voice down the corridor. Max moved back to her spot in the queue and did the second thing which came to mind, which was to "accidentally" drop her folder over the bump and then bend to pick it up, effectively preventing anybody from tripping up over it. It was a foolproof plan, and Max silently congratulated herself over it as she gathered papers back into her folder -   
Or it would have been foolproof, if Victoria had been looking forward when she was talking to her goons.   
"-long enough to-" she was saying, before she tripped over Max who was still crouching on the floor. "What the fuck-!"  
Victoria went sprawling, but this time her waterbottle soaked two more people who both glared at Max, and Victoria was sprawled on the floor clutching her wrist and giving Max an enraged glare, and now her goons had tripped as well over some of the papers Max had dropped in a train wreck of an ungainly mess of limbs and it was a disaster and everyone was mad at her and -   
  
<<<<<<<<<<<  
  
Max pulled a "wet floor" sign out of the cupboard and placed it over the bump in the linoleum just as the doors at the far end of the corridor opened with a snap.  
"- think he is," rang Victoria Chase's distinctive voice down the corridor. Max let out a sigh and watched Victoria notice the sign and walk around it, resulting in no trips, no spills, and no accidental face elbows. The job was done, and with a lot more effort than she had originally intended to expend. At least now the worst thing she got off Victoria was a curious glance and then a savage eye roll, which was a lot less painful than being accidentally walked on.   
Max slumped against the wall, glad it was all over.  
  
Or so she thought.   
  
///  
  
The sun was still just as warm at lunch time, so Max took her lunch outside to eat on the grass - the picnic benches were full of cliques she didn't have the confidence or ability to penetrate, subtle interconnecting circles of she-said-this and he-did-what, webs from which there seemed both no entry and no escape - and besides, Max was okay with eating alone every now and again.  
Maybe Max was lonely. It wasn't anything new - this invisible wall between her and everyone else, like somehow everyone knew she was different and marked and unfriendable. Not offending people or not seeming weird was like a constant board game where everyone else seemingly knew all the rules already and had been winning their whole lives, whereas Max kept getting sent back to the first square after rolling wrong and fucking up and doing something... something dumb, something that had seemed arbitrary but ended up being important.   
It could be so many things. Not making eye contact. Making too much eye contact. Not rambling. Not muttering. Somehow knowing what to say to someone to amuse or comfort them, and then once you had worked out which lines to say, you still had to figure out how to deliver them - it was all so complicated and stressful and overall tiring that sometimes, even when Max felt so horribly achingly lonely, she still preferred eating alone.  
But the time powers had changed things. Social interactions were no longer life or death situations. There was a real life undo button, and Max was beginning to learn how to salvage a conversation even without raising her hand, and it was paying off - people had noticed new Max, talkative Max, some of them waving, some of them even yelling out a greeting like they'd always been friends.  
No invitations to lunch just yet, but maybe it was just a matter of time.   
Lord knows, Max had enough time to spare.   
She almost felt content as she sat back in the grass and did a little cloud watching, the gentle hum of a student body at ease washing around her. Almost.  
Until Victoria Chase's voice pierced the atmosphere like an flaming arrow through butter.  
  
"Ugh, I hate it when it gets this hot and I have to tolerate people who don't use deoderant properly," she said, throwing a dirty look in the direction of some seemingly random victim. "Do people just decide to ruin the day of everyone around them with their gross barnstink?"  
  
Max watched Victoria walk past on her way to a lunch table. She had left her customary designer sweater (Max had noticed it was an expensive maroon this morning) by her friend Taylor who was sat on the grass, and was almost floating ethereally towards a table in the light of the sun. With her golden hair haloed by the glare, she would have looked almost classically beautiful if it were not spoiled by the noises coming from her mouth.   
"Do you think some kids are so stupid that they can't figure out how to use the shower properly? Durr, turn the knob and drown yourself under it. Idiots."  
Max rolled her eyes as she watched Victoria's other crony - the nameless girl, fucking hell Max remember her name already - laughed in a rehearsed, fake kind of way.   
And then, quite suddenly, a football was hurtling over Max seemingly almost at the speed of sound. It hit Victoria's bag straight on with a shattering noise, Taylor jumping in surprise next to it, and Victoria turned around with an expression somewhere between irritation and then, quickly, pure horror. She ran to the bag and opened it, making small distressed noises.  
"No no no no no," she was saying, as Max sat up in alarm. "No no my camera... oh no." Shards of glass were visible poking out from the bag. It might have been a camera before, but now it was just junk. "Fuck... fuck! That had a whole roll of photos in there! They're all fucking ruined!" Victoria turned to Taylor in disgust. "My project! Why didn't you stop that ball, Taylor, you idiotic fucking bitch! You useless piece of shit!"  
  
Max didn't particularly like or dislike Taylor, but she didn't really deserve this stream of vitriolic abuse. Besides, Max was a photographer at heart, and just seeing someone else's baby get killed so mercilessly by a careless jock made something deep within her protest loudly.   
Super Max to the rescue. Yes ma'am, I'll save your baby from the evil sports.   
Max raised her hand.  
  
<<<<<<<<<<<  
  
Until Victoria Chase's voice pierced the atmosphere like an flaming arrow through butter.  
  
"Ugh, I hate it when-" she began, but Max didn't listen. She was busy waiting until Victoria had moved away a little before she stood up and sneaked across the path to where Victoria's bag was. Maybe nobody would notice if she moved it to the left a little?  
Max grabbed the handle of Victoria's bag and her sweater too, and was well on her way to putting it somewhere safer when Taylor looked up from her phone and saw  her in a slightly compromising position.  
"Hey, stop, are you - are you trying to steal Victoria's bag?" Taylor looked both shocked and angry. Max paused.   
"No, I'm just moving it-"  
"Victoria! Victoria, Max is trying to mess with your stuff!"  
Shit. Victoria turned around rapidly and started marching towards Max with a vicious look in her eyes.   
"What the fuck do you think you're doing? Are you seriously stealing my stuff? Are you kidding me, are you really that poor? Oh, I am going to fucking-"  
The football hit Victoria square on the side of her head, and she fell to the ground in a sickeningly loose way which made Max's stomach turn.  
For fuck's sake, she thought in a panic. I've killed Victoria Chase.  
Max raised her hand.  
  
<<<<<<<<<<<  
  
Until Victoria Chase's voice pierced the atmosphere like an flaming arrow through butter.  
  
"Ugh, I hate it when-"  
  
Max ran and grabbed her bag, emptying it of anything valuable or breakable (which wasn't much). Out came her camera and her journal, and the rest was just inconsequential schoolbooks. Then, she ran back across and stood a little ways in front of Victoria's bag, spotting the two dudebros throwing the ball at each other in gradually bigger and bigger arcs before finally, one of them slipped and the ball was flung directly at Max's face at a frightening speed -  
Max held up her bag and used it to catch the ball, bracing herself against the impact, just as Taylor looked up and spotted her.  
There was a stunned silence, before one of the bros yelled "sweet catch, dude!" in an obviously impressed tone. Max let her bag drop and picked out the ball, which she examined sullenly. Football needed to be banned forever. It caused more trouble than it was worth. She threw the ball back at the dudebros, who just looked stunned.  
"... holy shit," said an awed voice from somewhere just behind, and Max turned to see Taylor looking up at her with wide eyes and an open mouth. "That was incredible. Thank you so much for catching that - Victoria would have killed me if that had hit her stuff."  
Yeah she would, Max thought grimly, before shrugging and shooting Taylor an apologetic smile. "It was nothing. I just saw it coming and... I was afraid it might hit you or something."  
Taylor's expression melted into pleasant surprise. Evidently that had been the right thing to say. "You know, I thought you were a shallow asshole, but you're not really that bad. I'll let Victoria know you saved her shit, by the way. You must be so lucky to have caught that."  
Max looked up at Victoria to see her watching Max with an unreadable but very thorough expression.   
"Yeah," she said dryly. "Really lucky."  
  
///  
  
By the time the third incident happened, Max was nursing the beginnings of a burgeoning headache, a real marching band pattern just ever so slightly throbbing in the space behind her eyes, and she was forcing her way through it via some serious relaxation music through her earphones (some Jack Johnson, a little of the quieter end of Radiohead's discography) on her way back to the dorms.   
Just as "Let Down" was beginning to segue into its first chorus, Max turned a corner and stopped suddenly. There - of course, why wouldn't she be there on a day like this - there, inevitably, was Victoria Chase, talking into her phone in the middle of a conversation which sounded more like a heated debate from where Max was.  Victoria clearly wasnn't getting her way, if her posture said anything: hunched shoulders, huge frown, eyebrows knit together and her fingers clenched in the material of her sweater tightly. She was sat on the steps up to the dorm (having not learnt her lesson from the paint incident apparently), almost looking as if she wanted to curl into a ball and disappear.   
The little patch of grass in front of the entrance was empty for once. Students were either out enjoying the sun down by the sea or were escaping the heat indoors where the AC worked, if only intermittently. Max was unsure of how to proceed. Victoria looked vulnerable. She looked as if she was hunted, hounded, and Max didn't want to embarrass her by letting her know that she knew that - okay, this was getting confusing.   
A bird sang. Max watched a pigeon land just above Victoria's head on a stone jutting out from the wall above the entrance.   
"... Yeah, I get it. Look, I'm not in trouble. Seriously. The teacher's just being a stupid little... no, no, not Mr. Jefferson, my other... no, look. That bad report was him just having it in for me, okay? He hates my guts. No, I don't know why! No, don't - ugh. No. Fuck," she said, the person on the other end having evidently hung up and left. When she rubbed her nose and curled in a little more, Victoria looked exhausted and miserable, and Max found herself pitying this spoilt little rich girl. It was strange.  
The more she saw Victoria in private without her followers, the less scary she seemed. It was like she put up a vicious act just to hide how upset she was. (Maybe that was what she did, Max realised with a jolt. No... no, it wasn't possible. Victoria was just a bitch through and through... right?)  
  
The pigeon cooed above Victoria's head. With a whirr of its wings it flew off - but not before leaving a little gift behind. Max watched in fascinated horror as a huge dollop of bird shit landed right in Victoria's hair, and she raised a hand to feel what had hit her - bringing it down in disgust and trying to shake it off her hand.   
"Great," she said, sounding close to tears, "fucking great, more people shitting on me-"  
  
Max sighed in a longsuffering way, and pulled an umbrella out of her bag. She would likely get no thanks for this, but wasn't doing a good deed every day meant to be in the girl guide promise? This was her good deed. A selfless act, even if it was for a snobby bully.   
She raised her free hand in the air.  
  
<<<<<<<<<<<  
  
Just as "Let Down" was beginning to segue into its first chorus, Max turned a corner and opened the umbrella, ambling across the courtyard leisurely (and ignoring her now immense headache). Now she had time to notice how the sun was slowly, slowly beginning to creep to the horizon, ever so slightly, shadows lengthening away and across the grass into the wild. She thought about the deer she had seen, and meeting Chloe, and being nice to Victoria, and she thought about how sometimes when she had been sad or confused she had snapped out instead of being mature and civil.  
She thought about Kate Marsh, tired and hit by a crumpled note from Taylor's hand, and she thought about how weird it was that there were such strong lines between cool and uncool - maybe not all the time, but it really did matter when you were at the bottom of the heap. School, college, it was so rigid and unfriendly, so full of bullies and cliques and people who didn't seem to like each other very much, and now she wondered if maybe it was possible to change that. Just a little, just enough. Could anyone change it with time powers available?  
Victoria was just about finishing up her stressful phone conversation, so Max walked over slowly, making little noise. Victoria rubbed her nose, looking just as vulnerable, but this time shooting Max a suspicious glance - noticing her for the first time.  
The pigeon cooed, and Max held the umbrella above Victoria's head.  
"What are you doing, you weirdo-" began Victoria, but then the splatter of birdshit hit the umbrella (and with no bad side effects this time, hooray!) and she just looked speechless.  
Max took out her earphones - goodbye Radiohead - shook the umbrella off into the grass and dropped it, knowing she could clean it with the sprinklers later.  
"Did you just-" said Victoria, sounding dumbfounded. "Did you really just protect me from... some bird shit?"  
Max nodded and looked away, examining her own shoes. "Yeah."  
"But how did you know it would...?"  
Max hummed a little, inspecting her nails for dirt, before looking up at Victoria and finally saying, "it just looked like it had a load on its mind."  
Her feeble joke was greeted with silence, and Max at first felt disheartened - but then Victoria burst out a short, sharp bark of laughter, a shocked and incredulous sound which wasn't wholly cruel. Max found herself giggling a little too.   
"Max Caulfield," Victoria said, "you fucking witch. Are you secretly psychic? Can you tell the future too? I saw you protect my bag earlier from that ball. You didn't just do that spontaneously - you took stuff out of your bag, I saw it on the grass. Your journal and your camera. I saw them. You knew."  
"Don't be ridiculous," said Max, face heating up. Shit, she was a terrible liar. "I'm just in the right place at the right time."  
Victoria eyed her shrewdly. "Apparently so."   
There was a moment of silence. It was a little awkward, yes, but Max didn't find it stiflingly so. It was fluid. It was moveable.  
Victoria broke it first. "Thank you. For saving my bag, and my hair. You didn't have to do that."  
"It's nothing. I didn't want your camera to get hurt - those things are expensive and you have a really nice model." It really was. Max was so jealous.  
Victoria preened a little. "I could have gotten another one, but thank you. At least now I don't have to ask my..." She stopped herself, before shrugging. "Yes. Well."  
"Was that who you were talking to just now?"  
Victoria stiffened. "Why do you care?"  
Max shrugged it off. "You just seemed really tense and upset. It can get really stressful talking to parents sometimes, I know."  
"What do you know," Victoria said viciously, the hints of a sneer appearing again. "It's none of your business."  
Shit, shit, wrong thing. Max considered rewinding but then Victoria spoke again. "So are you trying to be nice to me or are you just being nosy again."  
"I'm not nosy."  
"Yes you are. You only ever speak to people to find out gossip, and you pry around their rooms - that's what people are saying about you."  
Okay, maybe Max WAS a little nosy sometimes. "I don't do that! And I speak to people because I care about them too. I know I'm quiet in class but I do care, okay? I like helping people."  
Victoria clearly wasn't buying it. She looked doubtful, but Max laboured the point. "I helped you today. Not because I'm nosy - you're right, the phone call is none of my business - but just because it's a nice thing to do."  
"So you're trying to suck up to me?" Victoria glowered.   
"No!"  
"Why are you trying so hard to be my friend?"  
"This is just normal interaction!"  
"Is it? Is it, Max? So you're just doing your duty? Oh, how wonderful, Blackwell Academy's very own Everyday Hero! Now I get it, you're trying to suck up to Mr. Jefferson and win everyone around for the photo competition-"  
"Victoria," Max said, holding out her hands in a gesture of helpless appeal. "Being friendly isn't sucking up to someone, even if I don't do it as much as I should. Being friendly, that is, not sucking up. I'm just trying to make friends, okay?"  
Victoria was quiet for a very long time. She scrutinised Max with that unreadable, systematic expression which was starting to become very familiar - as if she was trying to analyse what Max's motive's were, what her dreams were, what she was thinking. Max could almost believe that Victoria had somehow mastered the art of Legilimency from private lessons with Professor Snape if the mental image of Victoria draping herself all over the greasy figure from the HP series wasn't so utterly horrifying.   
"Do you want to be my friend?"  
Max froze. She wasn't sure about her answer. If she said yes... then wasn't she giving Victoria a weakness to exploit? Wouldn't Victoria call that a sign of weakness, make a big deal out of it, bully her worse?  
If she said no... she might offend Victoria, but that was unlikely, because Victoria clearly didn't like her very much (right?). No would be the more sensible option. Max should say no.   
"Yes," she said, her time-travelling hand itching to rise up. Shh, down boy. Not yet.   
Victoria went quiet again.  
A little more time passed.  
"Whatever," she finally said, standing up and brushing her skirt off. "I guess I can afford to be civil to you, or something. I mean, I guess you did save me a lot today. So... thanks."  
And then she smiled at Max, a quiet smile which turned her mouth upwards at the corners - yes it was a little uncomfortable, like she hadn't done it in a while, but it was genuine. Max stared in shock and resisted the urge to rewind time just to see it again.   
"Alright, well," said Victoria, looking around with an air of finality, "see you around, I guess. I suppose we can talk later. If I feel like it."  
"Yeah," Max replied, still a little dazed, "talk later. Later, Victoria."  
  
And like that, it was over, and Victoria was spinning around and heading to her own dorm, and Max was sitting on a wall clutching her head and wondering which alternative universe she had just ended up in where Victoria Chase was actually decent. 


	2. Still Life

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> after so many lovely messages urging me to continue (thank you so much!! you guys flatter me so), there was no way i couldn't continue this fic. not when it's my actual guilty pleasure. good lord
> 
> more mandatory listening!!
> 
> [you already know](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5OT2M1r-XyM) \- bombay bicycle club  
> [obvious bicycle](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ANznirklths) \- vampire weekend
> 
> thank you <3

Max woke just before her alarm the next morning, and lay in bed for a while before deciding to hurry up and get clean. Somewhere down the hall a door banged, and the quiet hiss of water through pipes indicated that some early bird was already showering.  
  
Staying in a dorm was unlike anything else Max had experienced. It was a mixture of cheap hotel, scout camp, and the Sleepover Club - knowing everybody's business was inevitable, and you could either fight against it or accept it and go with the flow. Some, like Kate, fought it by barring their rooms off and choosing to shower when everybody else was out eating or partying.   
Some, like Dana, left their doors open and made the dorm into an extension of their private life - an open invitation to come talk, come listen, while Max was still getting used to passing by someone's open door without feeling like she was intruding upon something.  
  
Max was learning more about girls that ordinarily she would have avoided (out of fear rather than any snobbishness) than she ever thought she would. She had found out which shade of foundation Taylor used, and how often Dana washed her towels, and that Brooke liked to shower every evening and Juliet showered every other day and Alyssa's pink hairdye left little purple stains on the shower floors, and Stella was still not a morning person and probably wouldn't ever be.   
  
The weirdest things that Max had ever learnt, though, were about Victoria. Well, not weird. Just interesting.   
For example, Victoria always wore sandals in the showers. She took in three towels - Max had no idea why - and used spearmint whitening toothpaste with "enamel regenerative properties". Victoria always washed her face with expensive witch hazel and charcoal facewash, and did her make-up in the bathroom with Taylor while taking up 80% of the sink space - making life awkward for anybody else who wanted to use a mirror.   
  
Max entered the bathroom just to see Victoria close the curtain to the shower furthest away from the door. She hadn't seen Max, and Max didn't intend to change that. Victoria's shower started up with a hiss, and Max entered the one next to it (the mystery early bird was taking up the other one) and also turned on the shower.  
Victoria dropped a bottle with a loud clatter and swore. Max resisted the urge to snicker.  
  
This morning, Max was learning something new, which was that Victoria used lavender and tea tree shampoo and conditioner. She could smell it rise up on the steam from the hot shower as she herself washed her hair with budget apple shit, just like at home.   
It was typical. Everything Victoria did or had was some kind of statement. A top-range camera and accompanying accessories. A jumper which cost more than Max's laptop, probably. Things were not just things but messages meant to portray Victoria exactly as she wished to be portrayed - rich, powerful, de la mode, truly a member of the Blackwell elite. In a way, Max almost admired her for it. It was an interesting strategy to combat the inescapable scrutiny of high school and college.   
  
The shower next to Max stopped, and Max heard Victoria mutter to herself about something in the stall. Then there was the sound of the shower curtain opening, and some wet footsteps forward, and suddenly a resounding crash, a cry of pain, and a thump.  
  
"Ow, shit!" said Victoria, and Max quickly pulled a towel around herself and peeked out of her own stall.  
  
Victoria sat on the floor of the bathroom, holding her wrist and wincing, with her knees bent out at odd angles in a way which reminded Max of the ice skating scene in Bambi. It was clear what had happened - Victoria had slipped over while exiting her shower stall.  
"I think I've broken it-!" hissed Victoria while holding her wrist in a tentative way, and while Max wouldn't put it past her to exaggerate, Victoria did look like she was in a great deal of pain.   
That was quick, Max thought resignedly, and held up her hand.  
  
<<<<<<<<<<<  
  
Until Victoria dropped a bottle with a loud clatter and swore. Max resisted the urge to snicker (again) and instead, making sure her towel was secure, silently crept out of her stall to grab a load of tissues from the dispenser by the sink. These she spread over the puddle slowly forming outside Victoria's shower until she was almost certain that slipping over was an impossibility, before she heard Victoria mutter to herself about something in the stall.   
  
She snuck back into her own shower and pulled the curtain tight across.   
  
There was the sound of a shower curtain opening, a squeaky noise of a sandal slipping on floor and a gasped intake of breath before - a quiet "oh, ew" and the sound of a foot squelching on wet tissues. Max rolled her eyes. The paper tissues had stopped Victoria from slipping over. Genius plan: huge success.  
  
Victoria exited the bathrooms without further incident. Max finished her shower in peace and wondered whether someone had cursed Victoria and, if so, how long it would last: it wasn't like Max could spend her free time trailing her just in case yet another thing went wrong. God, if she had to spend another day on edge just in case Victoria did something stupid like die, she would be so mad.   
But she'd do it anyway. Max was a nice person like that.  
  
Just as she took a stand by the mirror to brush her teeth, the shower behind her shut off, and Juliet appeared with her hair wet and reaching her shoulders. Without her make-up on and her hair done up, she looked much different, much less intimidating and scary, especially when she gave Max a cheeky smile.  
"Victoria's knight in shining armor," she said drily, indicating the paper towels.   
Max mumbled "you saw?" around the mouthful of minty foam in her mouth, managing to spit little white flecks all over the mirror.   
"Classy, Max," Juliet laughed, before shrugging. "I heard about the football incident from yesterday too. Guess Victoria's lucky you're actually kind of a nice person - too bad she doesn't deserve it. She wouldn't do the same for you."  
"I know." Max shrugged, like what can you do? "But I'd feel bad about letting anybody fall over on these tiles."  
"The quiet hero, Super Max. You're the hero Blackwell deserves, but not the one that it needs right now." Juliet rolled her eyes, but gave Max a kind of friendly grin. "Just make sure you don't end up chasing around after Victoria doing all her homework like Courtney-" (shit was that the name of Victoria's other crony?) "-with that good nature of yours."  
Max just shrugged again and rinsed her mouth out properly, no longer dribbling bubbles like a rabid animal. "I'll try," she laughed, although tentatively. In order to succumb to Victoria and be her little homework bitch (oh how Max dreamed of it! Not), they'd have to be friends first, and Max didn't see that happening any time soon.   
  
///  
  
Victoria shot Max a glare in the darkroom in Photography Lab, but Max didn't care because she was too busy watching Stella hold up a tiny strip of film to the red light and examine what she saw. The subject - a tiny little Stella sitting on a rock with a stray cat - was miniature, and Max liked the way it looked like a model for some bigger object, or a stolen image of some waifish imp, a recreation of a real thing. It was cute.   
  
"I like seeing the small prints best," Stella quietly confided to Max, giving her a shy smile. "I almost don't want to develop them because look at how detailed it is - so much information packed into one little square."  
Max hummed in agreement. "You'd have to use a microscope to see all the detail."  
"Exactly!" Stella looked almost excited. "It just wouldn't be the same if it was printed full-size to canvas, you know? I mean, it would still tell a story, but I think I prefer it like this. It's nostalgic. It's how our parents used to take photographs - it's this legacy of saving a moment, the old fashioned way."  
"You mean, instead of digitally?" Max shrugged. "With this method you have to get it right first time. I wonder how many incredible shots have been lost because of someone running out of film?"  
"I guess that's more realistic though." Stella put the strip of film on her desk. "You can't redo moments of your life over and over again trying to get them perfect, it's one shot or bust."  
"Hmmm," was Max's noncommittal answer. When she looked up, Victoria was once again shooting her a glare - one which felt like an x-ray of Max's very soul - full of suspicion and scrutiny and something else.  
  
Ugh. Max didn't need to be on Victoria's radar when all she was doing was having a nice friendly conversation with her classmate.   
  
Victoria's eyes flickered down to Stella's bag, resting against Stella's stool as she hunched over a table lit with red light, and once again met Max's gaze. Oh no. Max got the horrible feeling that Victoria was planning something, but she didn't want to jump to any conclusions.   
But she was totally planning something.  
  
Stella got up to do something with a different piece of lab equipment, and Max shuffled away to concentrate on her own work (which mainly involved choosing which photographs she wanted to develop), and Stella's little scrap of film with her and the stray cat sat on her desk very unobtrusively.  
There was a beat of silence before Victoria wandered over. Max noted that she wasn't with Taylor - maybe Taylor had elected to do computer work instead of sitting hunched over in the dark like some kind of animal. She ignored the approaching girl as much as possible, putting all her concentration into finding the best shot out of all of her fairly generic photographs of a still life. Unfortunately, Victoria Chase was not the kind of girl who would be ignored so easily.  
  
"How twee," she announced, using one carefully manicured fingernail to pull the tiny film towards her to see it closer. Max sat on edge, ready to- well, anything really. "Cats. What an artistic breakthrough. That is certainly up there amongst the subject matter of the great artists."  
Max just turned from her work and fixed Victoria a steady look, which only seemed to fuel Victoria's urge to continue. She pursed her lips.  
"This is what happens when you let just about anybody into an elite photography class. Imagine turning in what is the equivalent to a lolcat to Mister Jefferson as part of your coursework - what a joke, it's almost insulting."  
"Don't you have work to do?" Max said, finally breaking silence. She'd had enough of Victoria's self indulgent ranting.   
"It's hardly work," scoffed Victoria, "if _this_ is all I'm competing with."  
"I like it."  
"You would." Victoria sneered. "It's not like you have any taste, is it. Come on, let's see your natural latent talent shining though. Caulfield's latest masterpiece - or is it just another selfie?" She approached Max's desk, Stella's scrap of film in her hand, her neck straining to see over Max's shoulder to see what she was working on. Max squared herself to block her view. Why was Victoria being so mean? It was like their chat yesterday outside the dorms had never happened. This wasn't even subtle - this was just sheer bitchiness! The only reason she usually got away with this was because Taylor or her other crony - fuck, Max, do you still not know her name?? - were egging her on, but this time Taylor was just looking... bored. Maybe uncomfortable.  
  
"Hey!" On the other side of the dark room, Stella let out a cry. "My photo!"  
  
"Put it down," Max said, finally turning around in her seat.   
Victoria's eyebrows raised. She looked at the photo faux-innocently. "What, this? Is it really that valuable? It looks like her dad took it."  
"It's not yours. Don't sabotage Stella's work."  
"I guess I won't," said Victoria, almost too easily. Max was stunned. "I'm sorry. I'll just- whoops!"  
And, almost by accident, almost, not quite - the slip of film _slipped_ out of Victoria's shiny nails down, down to the floor, where some careless teenager had left a puddle of unidentified substance -   
  
Max's hand rose before she could stop it.  
  
<<<<<<<<<<<  
  
Until Victoria's eyes flickered down to Stella's bag, resting against Stella's stool as she hunched over a table lit with red light, and once again met Max's gaze.  
  
Right. Probably too far, but whatever, this was fine.   
  
Stella got up to do something with a different piece of lab equipment, and Max quickly touched her shoulder.  
"Hey," she said gently and gestured to the little strip of film on Stella's desk. "You might wanna put this somewhere safe."  
"Good idea." Stella put the strip of film away somewhere in her folders and envelopes and canisters of stuff, and Max let out a quiet breath. When she looked back at Victoria, the expression there was almost comical - stunned, angry, but she quickly recovered and raised an eyebrow imperiously.  
Stella still wasn't safe. Max decided that the best way to avoid any future accidents was to face the oncoming storm head on, and with that, she stood up.  
  
It was pretty easy, pretending she was just having a nosy snoop around at people's coursework. A few people had come to the lab to do work in the comforting safety of the red lights. Some found it industrial, creepy, like a horror film, but Max thought it was festive in a way. She could understand why it might be considered creepy though. It smoothed out imperfections, or it increased them, and hair glowed black, and skin was too pale.   
A few people gave her nods and greetings - Taylor even hazarded a casual "hey", though it was shallow - before Max finally was anywhere near Victoria. Man. Actually, some of the fully developed photographs littering Victoria's desk were really good. Max really wanted to see them in full colour, in full daylight maybe.   
(She always had.)  
  
But first. Max took a deep breath.   
  
"Hey," she said, and Victoria just _looked_ at her like she was the shit under her shoe and raised that eyebrow again and Max broke out into a cold sweat and -   
  
<<<<<<<<<<<  
  
But first. Max took a deep breath.   
  
"Nice photos."  
Cue the face Victoria had pulled before, designed to belittle Max to nothing more than shit, but this time it was tempered with something like pride. Max powered through it. For the sake of Stella and her stray cat.   
"What, these? They're just works in progress."  
"Really? But they look so composed."  
Victoria was quiet for a little while, as if trying to calculate Max's angle. Max let her. There was no angle. "Oh really. Are you now the judge of all photography? A mini-Mister Jefferson?"  
"I wish," Max laughed, self-deprecating, and Victoria frowned. "I'm not exactly David Bailey but even I can see that you put a lot of work into them."  
Victoria's expression was a muddled mix of pride, disdain, and genuine pleasure, but she still shot back: "Did you come over here just to kiss my ass or was there a reason?"  
Max was so nervous that she felt almost sick. It was horrible, but looking over at Taylor and seeing her look intrigued rather than bitchy gave her confidence.  
"Not really."  
"Then shove it."  
  
Max raised her hand.  
  
<<<<<<<<<<<  
  
"Did you come over here just to kiss my ass or was there a reason?"  
"Yes," said Max, trying the other side of the coin. "It's a little embarrassing though. It's just that you create such an atmosphere in your pictures - it feels really alive, really fluid, as if they're going to leap out." She watched Victoria preen with every word. Yes, little monkey, dance for Max. God, where was this manipulative streak coming from? "I wondered if you would look at my photographs and maybe give me a few pointers on how to stop them looking so... flat."  
This was it, the fifty-fifty moment. Victoria could either mock Max and tell her to shove it where the sun doesn't shine, or she could be a decent person. God knew Max didn't have much faith in the latter, but then.  
But then.  
Victoria looked thoughtful, looked at Taylor (who nodded like why not?) and then looked at Max.  
"Fine. I'll take a look, but don't be surprised if it's past all salvation."  
  
That was it. Max blinked with surprise as Victoria rose and wafted past her in a blur of lavender and tea tree, and settled herself at Max's table on her chair. There, laid out solemnly, were all of Max's recent prints of the still life: a bottle of wine, an apple, some grapes, all done in black and white.   
Victoria hummed. Max took the chair beside her and waited patiently.  
"Well, the first problem is," said Victoria, holding a photograph up to see it better in the red light, "that it's fucking terrible. It's awful. I can see what you were trying to achieve, and really, Caulfield, did you think funereal was a good aesthetic for you? No, this is the epitome of boring. It's staged and fake. It's _trying too hard_ , it really is."  
"It's not the only thing trying too hard," Max muttered under her breath, but she managed to put a mask on of just-about feigned neutrality. "Is that your helpful advice? That it's terrible?"  
"I can't give you advice if you're not going to show me your _real_ work." Victoria dropped the print she was holding in disgust. "What is this shit?"  
"It _is_ my work."  
"No. I've seen you taking photos around campus all the time - you're always shooting something. Let me see some of those."  
Max shifted in her chair uncomfortably, glad the low lighting of the room hid her face a little. Not that it mattered when Victoria gave her a piercing glare. "That's different. Those are just... practise photos. Like a hobby."  
"A hobby." Victoria mocked her flatly. "Photography isn't just a hobby for you. If it was, you wouldn't even be here. Stop bullshitting me and show me your latest photographs."  
Max shut her eyes, before reasoning that it didn't matter. If Victoria started mocking her, she could just rewind time. Yeah. It was fine. She reached down into her bag and rummaged around, unclipping a few photos from her journal and laying them out on the table. There were a few lucky animal photos, one she had caught of a blue tit on her window (with a little help from her rewind powers), a passerby's friendly dog, catprints on concrete somewhere in the town.  
But Victoria seemed to ignore those and go straight for the ones with people in.  
There was a photo Max had taken of Stella in one photography class, a test photo, a snapshot of Stella eternally raising a hand with a strange smile on her face to do something out of view in the foreground.   
Some pictures of Chloe. Chloe unguarded, breathing reefer smoke like a stoner dragon and reading a magazine. Chloe, the very picture of concentration, a tiny line between her brows as she re-pierced her nose. Chloe, eyes shut, lying on a warm car bonnet, blue hair electrified under the sun's glow.  
These Victoria lingered on. Max sweated nervously, and tried not to feel like she was under examination.   
  
"This is that faux-rebel girl, isn't it," Victoria said, but it wasn't too sharp. "I've heard about her. You two are friends?"  
"Yeah," said Max, though she itched to correct Victoria to "bffsies".   
"I'm not a fan of the model, but you... you're more observant than I thought you were. Your photography is personal. I feel like I know her just as intimately."  
Max spluttered a little. "I mean..."  
"It's nice." Victoria seemed quiet. She looked away. "I li- I think it has potential."  
  
There was a beat of silence. Holy shit. Did... Victoria really just compliment Max's photography?  
  
"But you need to stop doing those terrible still life shots. They're the worst thing I've ever seen." With a neat little roll of her nose straight up into the air, Victoria stalked away with a decisive hip shimmy. "Just be yourself in your photos. Stop complicating it."  
Just be yourself. Max's head was swimming. She watched Victoria go, blinking with confusion, until the bell rang for the end of lesson. 


	3. Empty Can

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> there's an awful lot of falling in this story 
> 
> onto the mandatory listening!!  
> [wallflower](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RIjLJPrhCbs) \- peacock affect  
> [i hate seagulls](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kHovwoaQaaE) \- kate nash
> 
> again thank you everyone for the kind comments! i read and appreciate them all (so much) even if i don't reply. <3 thank you!!!!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the only warnings are: ableist slurs on behalf of one jock

The rest of the day, in comparison, was uneventful. Classes came and went. Max studied. Students laughed in the hallways and it echoed down the linoleum corridors and reverberated in scratchy graffiti on people's lockers, and gained weight until it was almost a living thing in and of itself. The school hummed. It breathed with its pupils, even when the heat of the day tried to push down and extinguish any strenuous activity.  
People were too tired to run in the halls. They were too tired to do anything but lean on their desks and languish.  
  
Max watched the clock count down to the end of her last lesson - Life Drawing, she enjoyed it but it could drag sometimes - and daydreamed about nothing in particular. A leaf blew past the window in an arching, endless spiral, and Max lazily held up her hand to watch it loop backwards, slowly -  
  
<<<  
  
\- before cursing and remembering that she was supposed to be speeding time up, not making it repeat itself. Dammit. And now her head hurt.  
  
Clever, Max, she thought, as the teacher droned her way through a presentation on Salvador Dali's Persistence of Time. Max felt as melted and eternal as the clock stretched out on the branch of the - was that a tree? - and suddenly she thought she might know exactly how the artist felt.  
  
"- exams are sooner than you think so I don't want any of you to start slacking off-" the teacher was saying, just interrupted by the shrill end-of-lesson bell which shook the sleepy classroom awake. Max jumped in surprise, then caught herself. Just a bell. Nothing major. No gun wielding maniacs, no flocks of killer birds come to peck her eyes out, no Mister Jefferson demanding that she turn in her latest assignment or risk being expelled for life from photography (an increasingly common motif in her nightmares recently). She packed up her stuff and let the flow of students leave before her, taking her time in gathering her things and ambling out of the classroom.  
  
If light could be described as slow, then the light filtering through windows from the sun outside was sluggish and lazy, rolling in waves over every thing and coating it to the touch. Max didn't take out her camera, but in her mind's eye she pictured the long, golden corridor captured still, every dust mote like a fly stuck in amber, chunks of sunlight pouring and pooling on the floor and settling on-  
Warren's face.  
  
"Oh, hello Doctor Evil," Max said in surprise, blinking a little. "Nice to see you've forsaken your lab for a little human interaction."  
Warren just grinned doofily (was that a word?) and gently smacked Max's arm. "Only until I engineer a bunch of lab rats to be able to enjoy anime. Then I'll never have to talk to anyone ever again."  
"Beep boop, my dork detector just detected previously undetected levels of sheer nerd," Max laughed, beginning to walk down the hall. Warren followed, and they fell into easy step.  
"Yeah, I don't doubt it. But a dork detector is a pretty dorky thing to own."  
"Then mine must be faulty, because it says that I'm free of trace amounts of dork. Wait, why were you waiting for me after class?"  
Warren just shrugged, still grinning. "Just wanted to chill with a bro. Maybe walk you back to the dorm and make sure you're not assaulted by any rabid squirrels on the way there."  
"Warren Graham, you're my hero," Max said in a nasal voice, and fell into giggles, while Warren just looked part offended and part exasperated. "Are you sure there's no ulterior motives here? You're not trying to subtly solicit me for a photo shoot or something, right?"  
"Nah, nothing like that," said Warren, holding the door open for her. "Though if you do want a profile shot of me to keep in your locket..."  
"Shut up," Max said, and ran past him, grabbing his bag on the way and stealing it successfully. Both of them were too lazy to run, too hot to jog, so she just ambled a few steps ahead and stayed ahead, waving his bag in the air. "Want it, can't have it!"  
"As always," Warren muttered, before jogging to catch up. It was all a mockery - neither of them were going fast. Max dared to spin around and walk backwards down the hall, juggling the bag and raising an eyebrow. Students flowed past her, preoccupied with going home. Warren watched as the sea of students parted around her.  
  
The bag was held aloft into a shaft of light. Warren's eyes widened. He did truly adore her, she thought with a sick jolt, and immediately felt guilty - that was good, right? Boys were supposed to fall in love with girls. They seemed to do it so easily. Max had never really been able to reciprocate the few times in her short high school career someone had dropped the l-bomb without warning, and she was afraid Warren's unasked question might go the same way as all the others.  
But it was nice until he ruined it that way. She decided to enjoy herself til then.  
  
Max opened her mouth to make some dorky Lion King reference-  
and was promptly knocked to the ground, Warren's bag dropping like a ton of bricks.  
  
"Hey, my Gameboy is in there-!"  
  
"Woah, watch it shithead."  
  
Max looked up from her spot on the ground, straight into the meaty, square jawed face of some jock who hung around with the Vortex crew, buzzing in their periphery like a meatball mosquito. He sneered. "Get out the fuckin' hallway if you're going to shit around, you weirdo. What are you, autistic? Fuck, I spilled my Red Bull..."  
He shook the drips of the energy drink off his arm into Max's face, still sneering, and Max covered her eyes and wiped the dregs off her face, ready to open her mouth and say something inflammatory.  
  
"Hey!" Warren was running towards them, ready to be Max's knight in shining armor. Max wished he wouldn't. This particular jock was of the musclehead brand - Warren would only get hurt, and Max could protect herself with her time powers!  
But before Warren could get near, Victoria's voice rang down the corridor.  
  
"Did you spill my fucking Red Bull, you human waste of space. What the fuck."  
"I just tripped over this aspie," the guy yelled. Max flinched. It was compulsive.  
"Then you should have watched your fucking step." Victoria stepped into view, and Max caught the view of the underside of her face, her narrow chin, the expensive cut of her jacket, the imperious arch of her brows.  
Max was doomed.  
"Wasn't my fault-"  
"Doesn't fucking matter, dick-for-brains. We're already late to meet Nathan."  
There was some kind of underlying struggle going on which Max couldn't identify - some kind of power play, and then the jock turned away, throwing the can down beside Max.  
Victoria, for mere nanoseconds, glanced down at Max, before hurrying away.  
  
Max sat herself up just enough to not feel like human garbage, before Warren was at her side and helping her to her feet. He looked furious, but Max was mainly stunned. No bitchy comments. No prolongued stink eye. If anything, Victoria had hurried the whole process along - not in a necessarily good way, and Max wasn't about to send her a thank you note, but it was suspicious.  
Talk about keeping your enemies close. It was like they were stalking each other! Every time something dramatic happened... boom, time for some good old tension between Max and Victoria.  
  
Not that there was any weird tension between them, Max thought quickly. No weird links or long looks across the classroom or anything. Haha.  
  
Warren touched her arm, but Max pulled away and gave him a smile instead. Oh Warren. He was the doomed one here.  
  
  
///  
  
It was later that day, and Max was ready to sleep - the heat had exhausted her. The corridors of the dorms were quieter than usual, aside from the distant sound of music coming from different rooms, and everyone seemed content to close their doors just for today. Some were probably out, doing interesting things. Some were probably in, doing even more interesting things. Max was doing neither: she was stood on the threshold to her dorm, engrossed in reading Chloe's latest text.  
  
TEXT: wow that is a difficult situation, but whatever. y don't you just date him?  
  
Why didn't she just date him?  
It wasn't fair, that was why. If she wasn't dating him because she liked him, then she was dating him because he really liked her, which was a good short term solution but presented problems when she started thinking about things like sex and marriage and literally anything other than maybe holding hands every now and then. The occasional movie she could handle! But actual, long-term, serious dating?  
  
But it would make Warren happy.  
But she wasn't completely certain that he did even like her and anyway how could she know? She couldn't know. He probably didn't like her like that at all. Yes! He probably just thought they were friends too!!  
  
As she wrote and rewrote her reply to Chloe, someone opened the dorm door and tottered down the corridor. If Max was concentrating, she would have heard the telltale warning signs of a stumble, the uneven steps, the fall, but it was too late. She only looked up late enough to see Victoria Chase fall to her knees and drop her phone with a quiet "fuck!".  
Without thinking, Max put her phone in her pocket and held up her hand -  
  
<<<  
  
\- and caught Victoria just before her stumble could turn into a trip. The shocked expression on Victoria's face was, some might say, priceless. The expression on Max's was arguably worth even more (especially from Victoria's vantage point of just by Max's shoulder).  
"Sorry," said Max, unclasping Victoria from her bosom (c'mon Max you don't even know what bosom means) and taking a few steps back. Victoria did an admirable impression of a goldfish out of water, opening and closing her mouth several times, but Max was already ambling back to her bedroom, checking her phone for new messages and deciding not to overthink Warren or Victoria or anybody who happened to be in a two mile radius.  
  
Max closed the door behind her, and Victoria's footsteps continued down the hall. Then stopped. There was a pause. Max certainly wasn't listening though, and she certainly wasn't keeping track of the number of seconds which the footsteps stopped for (4 seconds, if Max was counting, which she wasn't).  
The footsteps got louder again, and suddenly there was a polite but firm knock at the door. Max wasn't sure what to feel - dread? What had she done this time? Curiousity? Fear?  
  
But opening the door to Victoria didn't make her feel any of these things, especially not with Victoria looking so... hmm. She looked like she was about to confess her sins to Mother Superior. It was such an alien expression that Max felt nothing but a giggle rising up, which she thankfully stopped in its tracks.  
  
"Hey," said Max, wary, but risking a small smile. "What's up?"  
"Look," said Victoria, and she seemed to immediately rethink it. "Listen," she began again.  
"Hold hands before crossing the road?"  
"What?" Victoria paused, and seemed to decide it wasn't worth asking about. "Thank you for catching me in the corridor or whatever. That was... pretty nice of you, actually."  
  
Max blinked.   
  
"Uh, don't mention it? It was a pretty automatic response."  
"Hmm." Victoria peered down the corridor, before glaring at Max. "I don't get it."  
Huh. Max tried to translate that into something understandable. "What?"  
"I don't get why you did it. Why you're nice to me."  
  
Max rolled her eyes. "We talked about this, remember? I'm not trying to suck up to you, or steal your thunder, or anything like that. You said youself, the Blackwell Hero-"  
"No, shut up," Victoria said promptly, and immediately started talking again. "I'm asking why you stopped me tripping right now, when earlier... when earlier in the corridor, with..."  
  
Max suddenly understood. Victoria was treating this like some kind of barter system, some kind of "scratch my back I'll scratch yours" thing, right? It must be awfully stressful, Max thought sadly, to only do favours in return for other favours. "You didn't knock me over."  
"No, but I could have stopped it. Or defended you. Or, something. I didn't, of course, but you still do nice things for me. Why?"  
Max found herself pinned to the wall behind her by Victoria's gaze, and suddenly couldn't think of a good answer. "Be- because it's just the right thing to do. I didn't want you to break your phone."  
"It's not your phone."  
  
Max started sweating nervously. Even noted historical do-gooder Immanuel Kant would have found his sturdy theories sorely tested by the diamond hard edge of Victoria's trademark Look, which bored right into Max's very soul, made itself comfortable, and then asked if it could stay the week or so while testing the mantlepieces for dust with a very judgemental expression. Max gaped and floundered.  
  
"No, but. But I would feel sorry for you if it broke."  
"Are you saying that you pity me? Me? You pity me?" Victoria looked furious. Max nearly held up both hands, but managed to hold the dangerous hand down in time.  
"No, no! I don't pity you, or, or do it to embarrass you, or anything. I don't hate you, Victoria. Not at all."  
"... You don't?" The fire seemed to leave Victoria. "You don't hate me? Not even when I insult you and beat you at photography?"  
"You're good at photography," Max admitted charitably. "I respect that. Besides, it's not a competition, aside from when it is I guess."  
"But I thought you-" Victoria stopped herself. "It seems stupid to not hate someone who clearly annoys you."  
Max looked past the snippy tone and tried to work out what Victoria was really saying. That was the thing with Victoria - she never said what she meant, whuch was extremely frustrating when Max had enough trouble figuring out what people meant when they said it outright. In black and white. In large print.  
Was Victoria implying...? No. Surely not. Victoria couldn't be implying that she was worried that Max found her annoying. That was such an absurd leap of logic that it could only be done with someone who had the same sheer audacity as Victoria did.  
  
Max shook her head. "I don't think we have to hate each other every time we annoy each other," she laughed. "Otherwise I'd always be in your bad books."  
Victoria had no reply, so Max just smiled and made motions to go back into her room. "Hey, Victoria, you remember when you asked me if I wanted to be friends with you? I said yes. That wasn't a lie. If you ever need something, just come and ask me, and I promise I won't chew you out or gossip about it. Oh shit-" Max's phone was buzzing like crazy in her back pocket. She pulled it out to see a call from Chloe. "Shit. I have to take this. See you later."  
  
Then she shut the door on Victoria (whose expression was, once again, undeniably priceless).  
  
Max remained calm for all of three seconds, before she dropped onto the floor and held her head. Oh god, what was that? What was that at the end? Had Max really said that? God, she must have seemed like such an idiot, just saying it like that, just offering to be friends like that - no doubt Victoria would interpret it as a desperate bid for peace, a weakness, a stupid stupid stupid idiot fucking stupid -  
  
Max ignored her buzzing phone til the beat of her heart slowed back down to healthy, and she wasn't literally shaking with nerves. That wasn't normal, was it? She didn't _feel_ that nervous, but her hands were jiggling like hell, just from one tense little conversation with her classmate. Her classmate who could ruin her life probably. Her classmate who she just stupidly panicked and said a load of stupid things to.  
Should she rewind? Should she try again? Did she have the energy in her to attempt that mess all over again?  
  
Chloe called yet again. Max took one last deep breath, and answered the phone.  
  
"Finally! Jesus, Max, I was afraid you'd dragged him to your room and were busy getting jiggy while I was trying to get all the juicy details."  
What. Max had to untangle her brain from the twisted path to Victoria it had taken. "Wait, who- oh, right. Warren."  
" _Oh right, Warren._ Holy shit, Max, how many boys are you dangling over there?"  
"Just one... I'm kind of distracted by a problem concerning an entirely different gender."  
"Woah."  
"Hear me out."  
  
///  
  
They concluded that the only way to talk this over was with a side helping of fries and maple bacon at the diner.  
  
//  
  
Nothing much else happened that night until Max ventured to the bathrooms to brush her teeth pre-sleep. Passing by Stella, Dana, Alyssa and everyone else, Max was rewarded with friendly smiles and short questions like "how are you?" and "what's up?". They made her feel giddy. It hadn't occurred to her that they'd want to know. She reminded herself to do the proper thing and make sure to greet them like that in the future too, to show she appreciated it.  
  
There was nothing shocking in brushing her teeth. Nothing shocking in watching Taylor wash her face and wipe away the panda streaks which it caused around her eyes. Nothing unusual, nothing untoward the norm, nothing which even vaguely merited a rewind or a redo or even a close inspection - aside from just one thing.  
When Max went back to her dorm, she paused in the doorway again, and looked over to Victoria's room.  
  
Victoria was stood half in her door, on the edge of a conversation. She looked at Max. Max, like a rabbit in the headlamps, looked at her.  
  
The most unusual thing happened then. Victoria's mouth twitched, and the twitch grew, and a small, shy, kind smile appeared, and Max was too shocked to do anything but dopily half-smile back (probably more of a grimace than a smile).  
The Victoria looked away.  
  
///  
  
On her bed, Max examined her shaking hands. It wasn't the same shakes as earlier, that horrible rush of fear and embarrassment. This was a different kind of rush. A lifting joy, a bubble in her chest, an urge to text Chloe something nice.  
It was something which Max suddenly knew, with dreadful certainty, Warren would never inspire in her himself.


	4. Bricking It

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> <3 <3 <3  
> this chapter got rlly hard to write half-way through  
> sorry for the wait!!! sometimes writers block hits me like.... a brick....... from above............. or something
> 
> SHIT I ALMOST FORGOT MANDATORY LISTENING!! 
> 
> [the concept](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7JYH1pVbqpQ) \- teenage fanclub  
> [kiddo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lmiHF44jjvg) \- jasper sloan yip  
> these songs are definitely on a more cheerful note than the others haha

"So let me get this straight."  
  
Chloe put her hands on the table and squinted at Max, leaning forwards to get a better, more scrutinising and businesslike pose. The diner wasn't deserted, which Max was glad about because that meant Joyce's job was going well, and there was a comfortable hubbub of conversation underneath the jukebox playing some giddy 20s swing tune. It was at odds with both the theme of the restaurant - approaching 50s rock and roll - and the patrons, who most definitely looked like fans of both kinds of music (country AND western).  
But that wasn't the point here.  
  
The point was that Max had had a long day today. It had started off tense and weird. It had continued to be tense and weird, especially in the class she shared with Victoria, when neither of them looked at each other (okay Max had glanced once or twice and felt something funny happen in her stomach so had stopped). Of course things were normal. The same teachers. The same classes. The same "Max why don't you apply yourself in my lesson like I know you can" lectures from said teachers in said classes. But things were - undeniably - different.  
  
"Well," said Max, but was interrupted by Chloe.  
"Figure of speech. Look, we're talking about the same Victoria Chase here, aren't we? Snobbish rich girl with a trust fund the size of my parent's mortgage? About yea high -" Chloe held her hand about 4 foot in the air "- designer clothes, permanent bitchface?"  
Max made vague _maaaybe_ gestures with her hands and shrugged. "She's not * _that_ * bad-"  
"Max," said Chloe. "Max, no. Listen to yourself. What happened to the 'fuck the system, eat the rich' Max that I knew so well?"  
"I never said that," said Max, slapping Chloe's arm and grinning. The grin quickly faded. "I just... I'm so confused, Chloe. She's annoying and prickly and a massive bitch, but she's also kind when she wants to be, and she helps out her friends, and she's ambitious and-"  
"Blech." Chloe made gagging noises. "Alright. Stop, stop, jesus. So... what, you have a puppy crush on her or what?"  
Max went bright red right up to her ears. "No."  
"Sounds like yes to me."  
"Sounds like absolutely not, no way, never."  
"Why?" Chloe flexed her arm. "Afraid that you caught the gay from me?"  
"No, I'm just afraid that once I admit I like girls, I won't be able to resist your hot bod. Oh Chloe Price, take me now," Max deadpanned in a monotone voice.  
"Come on dude, be real with me here. How could you hang out with someone as rockin' as _this_ ," Chloe gestured to herself "and not know all these years?"  
Max shrugged and looked away. "I never really... had a crush on anybody. I think maybe that I just kept making really good friends with boys and then assuming that was what happened before you dated them."  
Chloe leaned forwards. "You've kissed a boy, right?"  
"Chloe!" Max pushed her away. "Fine. Yes. It was boring."  
"Hmm. Maybe you should just... roll with it. See what happens before you make any concrete decisions. Play it like a football game, sting like a butterfly, etc etc."  
"You mean, act like you?"  
"Shut up."  
  
Max sighed and played idly with a napkin, folding it over and over until it wouldn't fold anymore. She lost count of the folds. Eight, probably.  
"What's the point. She hates my guts. And-" Max sat up with conviction. "- and I hate hers."  
"Yeah!" said Chloe.  
"She's arrogant, and selfish."  
" _Yeah!!_ "  
"She's really vain and obsessed with her own (and other people's) appearance."  
"Go Max!"  
"But only because she's really insecure and worried about her reputation."  
"Yeah- um?"  
"... and she's really pretty."  
"Max, I think you kinda deviated from the focus there."  
"Uggh," said Max intelligently, before slamming her face on the table and groaning. "I'm screwed."  
  
Chloe laughed a little and kicked Max's leg gently. "You're forgetting something pretty important here. Let's say that you finally balls up and get the courage to ask her to hang out with you a little - netflix and chill, amirite? If she shoots you down, you can just..."  
Chloe wiggled her fingers mid-air.  
  
Of course. Max clenched her time-travel hand. The good ol' fallback. The trusty wingman. She got this.  
  
She laid her forehead back on the table, and groaned once more for good measure.  
  
///  
  
Max's stomach felt like it was full of hyperactive butterflies on steroids when she got back to the dormitories that evening.  
What was wrong with her? Even walking past Victoria's door to get to her own was an exercise in stretching her nerves to breaking point. She was both relieved and disappointed when Victoria didn't emerge from her room and start berating her for breathing too loudly or something, and when she was finally in her room...  
She immediately got onto her laptop and looked up Victoria's profile on social networking.  
  
Max, she told herself sternly as the page loaded, you gotta leave it alone. Like a scab or a blister.  
C'mon Max, as she scrolled down Victoria's statuses which were actually kind of funny but were mostly just bragging about her latest social venture, knock it off.  
Okay now really, she thought as a page of Victoria's photographs loaded. This is just getting ridiculous. Stop that, Max Caulfield. Stop that at once.  
But she didn't stop. She just kept scrolling through, looking at photos of Victoria's old school, one awkward family photo, some artsy photos she'd only seen briefly in class, endless pictures of the fancy coffees Victoria seemed to like buying from expensive coffee shops covered in cream and sprinkles...  
Until she came upon a selfie. Well, no, not quite - it was taken by somebody else, but the focus was so clearly on Victoria, looking directly into the camera, all accusatory eyes and a winning smile, that it couldn't be anything but a self portrait. Max felt guilty even looking at it. It was so commanding, so aware of itself, so... so nothing Max could ever achieve.  
  
With a sigh, Max tabbed out of the page.  
Or at least, she tried to.  
  
"You have liked this photograph."  
  
Shit. Shitshitshitshit _balls_. Max sat and stewed in her panic, checking the date of the photo - _shit it was from 3 months ago oh no oh shit_. Victoria would be checking her notifications any minute now. Any minute now, she'd be seeing a little message telling her that Max Caulfield had been snooping through her old selfies, and then what? School-wide humiliation? Withering looks in the corridor? Any minute now...  
Any minute now...  
  
Max nearly slapped herself for her own stupidity, but she had better uses for her hand.  
  
<<<  
  
With a sigh, Max tabbed out of the page - carefully this time, and with no accidental like-related mishaps. Nice save, Max. You got this.  
  
She attributed her nebulous headache, which wavered in and out between her dreams, to stress. _That_ she attributed directly to Victoria. What a surprise.  
  
///  
  
Max woke up late for class, which would have been nerve wracking enough if it wasn't for the fact she had been woken up by a shrill scream and a thud.  
Staring at the ceiling, she blinked, before jumping out of bed and running to her window - knocking over poor Lisa, her potted plant, on the way - and opening it, leaning out to see if she could spot the source of noise.  
Please just be a prank, thought Max.  
  
It wasn't a prank. Lying on the ground was a pale figure, a girl with her arm twisted up and her legs splayed out on the ground, face down into the steps of the entrance to the dorms. There was a brick, broken in half, just a little ways away from the... Max gulped. She didn't want to think of it as a body. It was a girl. Just an unconscious girl. Had she been hit on the head by the brick? Max was too far away to tell, and there was too much foliage in the way from plants growing up the walls of the dorms.  
"No!" Another girl - Taylor? it looked like Taylor - yelled. "Help! Someone help!"  
  
Max didn't need telling twice. She raised her hand -  
  
<<<<<<<<<<<  
  
\- until Lisa was stood upright again -  
  
<<<<<<<<<<<  
  
\- her head pounded like the mother of all hangovers -  
  
<<<<<<<<<<<  
  
\- the brick rose from the floor and bounced off the girl's head, reattaching itself to the masonry above the entrance to the door, and the girl swung upwards like a marionette whose strings had been pulled, and Max kept rewinding long enough to give her a good few seconds of lee-way -  
  
She stopped rewinding, and quickly examined the situation. There was the girl, who seemed terribly familiar, and Taylor, walking _away_ from the impending brick catastrophe. Max was temporarily disoriented. Had she... gone forward in time? It was too early for this.  
There was an ominous stream of masonry dust from where the brick would fall from.  
"Oh, shit..." Max could just hear the girl say, her voice echoing round the courtyard in a totally unmistakable peal of superiority. "I left my phone in my room. Wait here."  
  
Max was so stunned, she couldn't help herself when she cried out, an automatic response: "Victoria!"  
Victoria turned around and Max saw her face turn from window to window before locating her. She seemed about to say something -  
when the brick smashed into the ground beside her and broke in half.  
  
There was absolute silence, aside from Taylor letting out a small scream. Max didn't really know what to do in the situation. Her head pounded, her teeth felt like she had clenched them together overnight, and... fuck, her nose was bleeding. She quickly ducked her head back inside the window and closed it, sliding to the floor to clutch at her head.  
Christ. Fuck. Time travel just after waking up seemed to hurt, especially when it had been so vigorous and unplanned and raw, and for quite a long time too.  
  
What the fuck, she thought, checking her phone. It's only just 9 am, and Victoria's already gone and done it. She's managed to go and do something stupid like die.  
  
///  
  
In a way, it was almost lucky that Max's alarm had been Victoria's death screech. She made it to her first class only ten minutes late. If only she could have rewound a few minutes outside the door... but her nosebleed had already wasted her precious few minutes to get ready, and she didn't want to push it.  
Well. Not unless any more chunks of decaying building decided to kill another student that day.  
  
///  
  
The rest of the day passed in an average kind of way. Max pushed the brick accident out of her mind.  
Or, at least, she tried to. But the whole thing had pushed Victoria back to the forefront of her focus and now, she couldn't stop thinking about her lying there on the ground like a ragdoll.  
What if Victoria thanked her? Unlikely, but what if? Max could barely imagine it. Would she be nice? Would she lighten up? What if nothing changed?  
  
///  
  
Whatever bubble of slightly horrifying brick-related day-dreams propelled Max to her next photography lesson - a blur of lavender and tea-tree, blonde hair and thin eyebrows, almost there smiles interrupted by death from above - was completely and utterly popped within a few nano-seconds of seeing Victoria Chase glaring at her contemptuously. She looked livid.  
At first, Max wanted to crawl under a table and hide, but then she stepped forwards and gave Victoria a small smile.  
  
Then she ran to her own table without looking back. Fuck fuck fuck. That had just seemed to make Victoria angrier, for some reason.  
  
She didn't have time for this. She didn't have time for Victoria's needy glaring or arch expression or nice cheekbones! Today, she would be the big girl and claim her dominance over this particular table. No snooty rich girls to come and pester her, nobody stealing chairs or knocking the table legs, nobody but Max, Maxine, and Maximilian -  
  
"Mind if I join you today?"  
  
Max looked up into the sweet, sweet smile of Kate Marsh, and immediately melted. "Of course not. You've always got a reserved seat at the Caul kids table. (Hehehe.)"  
"Oh my god," Kate said in response to Max's terrible pun, and spread her own stuff out messily. "That was almost as horrible as the all the puns you made last week - the ones about edam and brie..."  
"Those were really cheesy," agreed Max.  
  
The sound of Victoria biting through her pencil could be heard across the room.  
  
Max relaxed. Kate was someone she had made friends with before her mysterious time powers had revealed themselves to her - she could talk without fear, joke without second guessing her own punchline, put her hand to rest and just _laugh_. Kate didn't mind if Max said something wrong! Usually.  
(She wouldn't mention the brick thing to Kate, or to anyone really. Not unless they asked. Max didn't want to look like a braggart, and besides, it would look suspicious, right? They might start wondering how she kept being so on time for everything but lessons.)  
  
"So Max," began Kate, giving Max her customary impish grin, "rumour has it that you're really getting on Victoria's nerves lately. Is that why she keeps trying to melt the back of my skull with her eyeballs?"  
Max groaned and shrugged. "I don't know. It's been a weird week. Let's talk about something else."  
"Alright Max," said Kate quietly, but she bent forwards and whispered, "if you ever want to talk about it privately, just let me know. That's what friends are for!"  
"Thanks," said Max, feeling herself grinning for the first time today. Sweet, precious Kate.  "But I'm okay. I think. I just need to... I don't know," she confessed, hanging her head. Kate giggled.  
"Geez, you look bushed. Have you been staying up marathonning movies again?"  
"No," said Max guiltily. She remembered the time Kate had messaged her at 3 am, concerned that Max was still displayed as online, only to be told that Max had nearly finished the Blade trilogy and just wanted to complete it.  
Kate stayed up late sometimes too. It worried Max. She never said she had trouble sleeping, but it was obvious she did.  
"Honest," Max continued, "I went to bed early and I didn't drink coffee beforehand. I counted sheep, and I fell asleep."  
Kate hummed a little. "Sure, Max."  
"Really."  
"Sure."  
"Kate..."  
"I believe you, Max!" But her grin said otherwise. Max huffed and laid her head on the table. Mr Jefferson walked in, and chaos returned to order.  
Max decided she was going to try very hard not to fall asleep in class today.  
  
///  
  
"... and remember, your project is only as good as the relationship you have with your partner. Talk it over, delegate chores, and don't be afraid to ask each other for help. Alright, I'll give you five minutes to pair up. Be free. Temporarily. Oh, and wakey _wakey_ , Max."  
Mr Jefferson clapped his hands once, and Max jerked awake. Shit. Balls balls balls. Project?  
"Uh," she said, nudging Kate, "what was that?"  
"I took notes," Kate said, sliding them across, "because you looked a little distracted."  
Max wiped drool from the corner of her mouth. "Notes on what?"  
"A project! We have to pick a partner and present some photos in the style of the artists we've done case studies on so far."  
Max shuffled on her chair nervously. "You mean present like... in front of the class?" Uh oh. Standing up in front of people and talking. Even the idea made her uncomfortable - when behind the lens, she was in her element, but as soon as the scrutiny was switched to her...  
"And Mister Jefferson," Kate said. "Which artist do you want to do?"  
"Uh," replied Max, mouth going dry and palms beginning to sweat at the idea of... of having to be watched by the entire class, of having to not mumble and look at the ground while speaking, of all those sets of eyes judging her and seeing her in the spotlight and examining her photographs- "What?"  
Kate touched Max's arm. "You're going to work with me, right?"  
"Move it, Marsh," rang a very familiar, very imperial voice from somewhere above Max's shoulder. "I'm afraid Max is going to be too busy being my partner."  
"What?" said Kate and Max in unison. "Victoria?" Max looked up into the glowering expression of one Victoria Chase. Her heart hammered in an entirely too enthusiastic way.  
  
Victoria raised one eyebrow at her. "I think Miss Lolcat over there -" she jabbed a thumb at Stella, who looked up at the mention of her name and then waved tentatively at Kate and Max "- could do with your company, Mother Superior."  
Kate looked just as uncomfortable as Max. "But -"  
"Don't you get it? I've commandeered Caulfield as _my_ presentation partner. Didn't I tell you to move it?" Victoria stayed, an intrusive and immovable totem just behind Kate's chair, and Kate had no choice but to gather her stuff up and leave, too quiet and meek to fight it.  
She shot Max a worried look as she left. Max finally found her voice.  
"Victoria," she said, mainly confused but very indignant, "I wanted to work with Ka-"  
"Listen to me a second," hissed Victoria, sitting in Kate's chair and leaning in to whisper to Max. "I know exactly what you're trying to pull with this silent hero bullshit. You were just _waiting_ for me to crawl over and thank you, weren't you."  
Max could barely even register the absurd nonsense of this statement. "... _what?_ "  
"You know I owe you. For saving my life earlier. And you've been sitting smug here, thinking I'm going to kiss your feet and fawn over you like Kate does."  
Max looked desperately for Mister Jefferson, but he was too deeply absorbed in a conversation with Daniel and apparently wasn't paying Max or Victoria any attention.  
"So I'll do you a favour," Victoria continued. "I'm going to get you an A plus on this project, _at least,_ and then we'll finally be even."  
Max glared at Victoria. "I can get the grades I need by myself, thanks."  
"I know you can," Victoria said, glaring even more. "You're a good photographer. But I can get you the grades you want, not just what you need. You're lazy. You don't showcase yourself. You need me if you want to ace this project which will, coincidentally, count towards our final grades. This might even raise your end result by a whole two grades."  
  
It was tempting, Max had to admit. She looked into Victoria's eyes and saw an enthusiasm there that she hadn't really ever noticed before. Victoria, who always got the highest marks in the class on her pop quizzes and her portfolios. Victoria, who was doggedly trying to succeed, and who was highly competitive.  
Did Max really want to sacrifice the emotional stability of working with a good friend for an A plus?  
"I," she said, unsure. "If... if we're going to work together, then you need to know that... I'm _not_ your enemy. I wasn't trying to hold this morning over you or anything. Really. I just... didn't want to look like I was bragging about it. Or something."  
Victoria examined Max. Max felt like her soul was being scrubbed out and hung to dry.  
  
"Fine. That _'let's be friends'_ thing you were talking about earlier, or whatever. It's worth putting up with your tragic sense of dignity to get your camera skills on my side."  
Max blushed. "But I'm not that good-"  
  
"And the time for discussion is up," said Mister Jefferson, reappearing at the front of the class. "When I call on you, tell me the name of your partner and I'll make a note so I don't accidentally schedule your team into different lab sessions this term. Hayden?"  
As Mister Jefferson reeled out the names, Kate looked across at Max from her seat with Stella. Max looked at her, then at Victoria, then at the floor.  
"Daniel?"  
Good grades? She really did need to ace photography - but did she need Victoria to do that?  
Maybe she was lazy, like Victoria said. Maybe she was stupid and she needed the crutch of the class leader.  
"Alyssa?"  
Kate would do fine without Max. In fact, having Max would probably hinder her grades, right?  
"Taylor?"  
Victoria was watching Mister Jefferson with a careful, neutral-set expression, her mouth just upturned into an odd kind of smile. Max didn't know why she was doing this.  
"Max?"  
Mister Jefferson turned to her, as did Kate and Victoria. Max said nothing, grasping her time travel hand under the table. She wasn't certain that even her time travel powers could help her now.  
"Max, don't keep me waiting. We all want to get to lunch today." Mr Jefferson said it humorously, but Max just felt like vomiting, which probably wasn't normal.  
  
"I'm... working with Victoria."  
  
Mister Jefferson's eyebrows skyrocketed. They were nearly out of orbit.  
Max withered under the gaze of nearly everyone in the class - it seemed that Victoria and Max's somewhat explosive rivalry had not gone unnoticed.  
"An unusual combination. I guess we'll see what happens when two titans clash. Stella?"  
  
Kate looked even more worried, and shot Max a look which clearly was afraid that Victoria was holding a knife to Max's back and forcing her to comply with her wishes, but Max just gave her the most insincere thumbs-up of her entire life (and an even faker smile).  
Victoria hummed.  
"I didn't think you were going to pick me, Caulfield. Don't take this as an opportunity to slack off."  
  
Max wondered if this was how it felt to sign a deal with the devil himself. Goodbye, immortal soul. Hello, Victoria Chase.  
  
///  
  
Max's next lesson was a jittery disaster. She couldn't concentrate on anything. Her hands didn't shake, but they did have trouble stopping her pen from leaving little biro scribbles all over the page.  
Her pulse wouldn't slow down for a whole hour.  
  
How was she going to survive a class presentation? It would have been easier if she had Kate - they could giggle about it together, and maybe Kate would calm her down with some nice tea, and maybe do the presentation for her while she sat at the front and switched slides.  
But an A plus. Max hadn't had an A plus in a while.  
  
Imagine her parents reaction to an A plus. The money, the hugs, the "honey I'm so proud of you"s.  
  
But Victoria.  
  
Victoria made her nervous, because she was a very pretty young lady who seemed to enjoy insulting Max on a regular basis. But Victoria was driven in a way Max couldn't really appreciate, a burning fire of ambition and passion which Max was almost too afraid to tap into - she didn't believe she was worth it.  
And then there was the smile, the quiet one, the one Victoria sent her like a post-card from far away. Max drew a little upcurved line with her biro onto her page, but it wasn't the same.  
  
It was a once in a lifetime, non repeatable event.  
Max wanted to see it again, one day. That was the trouble. She wanted to take a photo of it, maybe. 

 

God she was doomed.


	5. Book

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> v v short chapter due to being busy with uni applications (wish me luck)!!  
> but this should mean quicker updates haha
> 
> just one mandatory listening song!  
>  [bad day](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2SJCz3vC3FE) \- darwin deez

"Dorothea Lange?"  
"I thought you wanted to avoid pictures of suffering. You won't let me do Diane Arbus."  
  
It was mid to late afternoon. Max Caulfield was sitting in a little alcove of the local library, a thick book entitled Outstanding Photographers of the 21st Century on her knees, and Victoria Chase sitting beside her with an even thicker book that looked like it would cause some serious damage if dropped onto Max's toe.   
  
"True, uh. Annie Leibovitz?"  
"Oh, yes, absolutely. Let's bring a little melodrama into the project."  
"Her black and white portraiture-"  
"No."  
  
Max wasn't sure how Victoria had gotten her number in the first place - maybe she asked someone for it, maybe she bribed or intimidated them - but Max had been woken up early that morning by a string of texts downright ordering her to meet Victoria in the library to start their project.  
Despite Max texting back that they had plenty of time to do it, sheesh, Victoria was not the kind of authoritative team leader to take no for an answer.  
  
"Eve Arnold!"  
"Close, but it's too... too candid. We need something more staged, but not as staged as Leibovitz. We need..."  
  
Max had sent Kate and Chloe an early draft of her last will and testament before setting out. She had also taken an extra shower, brushed her hair extra thoroughly, brushed her teeth again and attempted to clean the dirt off the whites of her sneakers before giving that up as a bad job.   
She had never been so nervous. A literal bag of nerves. A gelatinous membrane full of messy, sparking nerves and bitten off fingernails. Logically, there wasn't much that Victoria could really do to embarrass Max - what was she saying, Victoria could do anything she pleased. It was Victoria, after all, and she ran the joint as much as Max was just a distant star on the longest arm of the Victoria galaxy.  
But suddenly Victoria was taking an interest in Max's little star, it seemed. Max didn't think that she herself was anything special - mediocre grades, not exactly super hot, and her picture taking skills were above average at best - but Victoria seemed hell bent on catching a ride on the blazing tail of Max's shooting career as it arced through Blackwell Academy.   
If Max had been observed for once, then it was definitely a role reversal she wasn't accustomed to. What she was accustomed to was being the eyes of the class - the silent observer, quietly noting down certain things and discarding other information as unimportant. She listened to the low, whispered conversations about life and death and boys, and she watched girls put on their winged eyeliner and their straight faces, and most of all she watched how her classmates worked - how they shot, captured a moment for themselves.  
It was the best way she was aware of that allowed her to fully emphasise with their point of view.   
  
It was because Max watched, and noted, and placed herself in the eye of the beholder, that she knew exactly which photographer Victoria Chase really wanted to emulate.  
  
"Richard Avedon."  
  
Victoria paused, hands tightening around the thick book on her lap. Max watched her expression falter from exasperated to open and curious, and decided to file away that information for a later date.  
  
"How did you know he's my favourite photographer?"  
Max thought back to one of those early classes in photography when the dividing lines between the two sides of "cool" and "not" hadn't been so clear, and when Jefferson had set some stupid ice-breaking activity which everyone hated and he openly criticised. He told them to think of a question and find out everybody's answer to it.   
In an effort to start her new school year on a good footing, Max had chosen something fairly generic: do you have a favourite photographer?  
Before she had learnt Victoria's name, before she had been so thoroughly dismissed by Victoria's snobbish attitude, before the boundary lines were drawn up and everyone was just as lost and confused as each other, Max had had the confidence to go up to Victoria's face and ask her:  
Do you have a favourite photographer?  
  
"I asked you once. At the beginning of term?"  
Victoria blinked. Max watched her examine the memory incredulously, as if it were a dream from long ago - her expression, when she looked Max dead in the eye in that customary shameless Chase patent way, was strange and half-formed - a photograph disturbed during development, eyebrows lax, mouth caught just open.   
"Oh. Well. I didn't know you paid that much attention to... to me."  
Max just smiled and nodded, trying to hide her sudden panic at realising she didn't remember a single other person's favourite photographer but Victoria's.  
It wasn't her fault! It was just that Victoria had been the most commanding one there, with her bright jewellry and her keen expression. Max had been intrigued, before she was gradually snubbed and kept at a disdainful distance for the rest of the year.  
Until now.  
Victoria didn't need to know about any of that, though.   
  
"Hahaha," laughed Max in a kind of sickly way. "Anyway... so Avedon, right?"  
Victoria looked down at the book on her knees and nodded. "Uh... yeah, yes. We could really make some kind of statement about... about that old style of glamour her used in his photographs, about how he..." Victoria trailed off mid-sentence, before shooting Max a cautious glance. "You're not just picking him because I like him, right?"  
"No," Max lied. "I really do like his style - he's really..."  
"Glamorous," said Victoria, at the same time as Max said "unapologetic."  
  
There was a moment of silence.  
  
"So," said Victoria, "I suppose we should recreate some of his work, then. Who will we use as models?"  
Max hummed, looking down and tapping a staccato pattern on her jeans with a nervous hand. "People from college? People in our class?"  
"Absolutely not," said Victoria. "The point is we need people that our class doesn't already know - we need to tell a story from scratch though the portrait."  
"Oh, right," said Max. "And uh. Are we going to technically recreate his work, or just digitally alter...? What did he use?"  
Victoria made a noise of frustration. "He used a view camera, he used some kind of rolleiflex, it wasn't about what he used."  
  
There was a tense silence.  
  
"Okay," said Max, "I think we can take a break now. Do you want to go and get breakfast?"  
"With you?" was the immediate and incredulous response, and Max immediately wilted - it had been an innocent question, and she hadn't wanted to invite Victoria anywhere anyway.   
Right. Not friends. Sometimes she got really sick of Victoria's high and mighty snobbery.   
"I meant separately."  
Victoria's cheeks coloured. Max wondered if she had said the wrong thing.  
"Right," said Victoria, her lips pursing together. "I suppose you have a social status to uphold, don't you."  
Max squinted. That was a bite of sarcasm, wasn't it? Victoria was trying to be mean again. Yep, she had definitely said something wrong there - maybe she should... invite Victoria along?  
  
<<<  
  
"With you?" was the immediate and incredulous response, and Max shrugged, putting on her nicest, most amiable smile (which she hoped worked and didn't just look like a pained grimace).  
"I was going to go grab some from the college cafeteria, but you can join me if you want."  
"Ugh," Victoria eloquently said, sneering a little. "Are you kidding? That place is gross. The food looks like it's been recycled twice already."  
"Alright," Max shrugged easily, and turned back to the book on her lap.  
  
There was a long silence from Victoria.   
  
"But thank you for inviting me," she said. "I'm sure you're perfectly okay to eat breakfast with, even if your taste in food is disgusting."  
"Hey! Not always. I know a place which does the best breakfast you've ever tasted." Max grabbed her own stomach and smiled. "Oh man. The waffles are perfect and the bacon is just the right amount of crispy, and the maple syrup is on tap, and it's the coolest place. I usually go there on weekends to eat."  
Victoria raised an eyebrow and looked skeptical. "What's it called?"  
"Two Whales Diner."  
"That dump?" Victoria made a gagging noise, and Max's expression gradually dropped from exuberant to glowering. "Are you being serious? I heard that place has been nearly shut down like 5 times this year. Isn't it that really tacky place with the cringey music full of greasy men crying into their sausage and grits? You couldn't make me eat there in a million years."  
"Fine then," said Max coldly, a spark of vindictive rage leaping up her throat. "I won't."  
"I mean, how tasteless do you have to be? Who even likes formica? Who thought that would be a good idea?" Victoria was on an oblivious roll. "Nathan says its where truckers go to die, and apparently the lady who runs it is like a total bitch-"  
"That's my best friend's mom," said Max forcefully, her chest heaving.   
  
There was a very awkward silence.   
  
"Well, like, I'm sorry? I mean, it's just a diner." said Victoria finally. "Do you actually like that place?"  
"Yes. A lot. It's like a second home to me." Max's hands were shaking, and she realised that she was really terrible with confrontation - but this was important. It was a place which meant a lot to her. "Joyce isn't a bitch. She's one of the best women I've ever known."  
"Oh," said Victoria, and then "okay."  
Max jiggled her foot a little, before realising that really, this wasn't fun anymore. She wasn't obligated to stick around! Victoria could stay and read books all she wanted by herself - her own stomach was rumbling, and her hands were jiggling, and really she just wanted to go back to sleep again.   
"I'm going to go get some breakfast now," she said, standing up abruptly.

"Wait, am I still invited?" Victoria looked up at her open mouthed, clearly caught in some thought process, but Max was Annoyed with a capital Augh.   
"You don't have to come," she said sharply.  
"Wait, what-"  
  
But Max had gathered up her bag in one fell swoop and was walking away, leaving an open mouthed Victoria to retrieve the book on the floor, where it had fallen from Max's lap.


	6. Camomile

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> HELLO AGAIN i am back from the dead!!  
> life is a bundle of stress but i read and smile so hard at every kind, supportive or helpful comment you guys leave me  
> <3333 precious and wonderful
> 
> mandatory listening!!!  
> [Falling In Love At A Coffee Shop](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=erywPdFfORE) \- Landon Pigg

Max's phone buzzed about 10 minutes after she had left the library and started heading for the college canteen, and she wondered whether Chloe had sent her a message.   
It was Victoria. Max frowned and contemplated just ignoring it, but in the end her curiosity outweighed her hurt feelings.   
  
TEXT: OKAY FINE I GUESS I'LL DO THIS FKN PROJECT ALONE THEN   
  
Welp.   
Max made the executive decision not to reply. There was a cheap and nasty ham sandwich waiting for her in the cafeteria.    
  
///   
  
Her phone buzzed again about 15 minutes later. Max had taken two bites from her ham sandwich.   
  
TEXT: Are you mad at me or something???   
  
///   
  
10 minutes later, yet another text alert. The sandwich was nearly gone.   
  
TEXT: What did I do? are you rlly going to ignore me GROW UP   
  
Max ignored her.   
  
///   
  
2 minutes. Max was just about ready to turn off her phone at this point.    
  
TEXT: IF YOU DON'T REPLY I'M SWITCHING PARTNERS   
  
Fuck. Max needed that high grade. It was extremely tempting to just reply "okay!" but she really, really wanted that grade. A lot.   
She set about composing a suitable reply.   
  
SENT: I really like the Two Whales Diner.   
I told you that my best friend's mom runs it.   
  
The reply came back within seconds. It was pretty typical Victoria.   
  
TEXT: okay fine I'm sorry JFC. I didn't realise I'd accidentally insulted your family honour or something   
  
SENT: Have you even ever eaten there?    
  
TEXT: no??? I don't have breakfast at diners I HAVE A REPUTATION.   
  
SENT: Bye.   
  
Max's finger was just on the turning off button when a single hurried text sounded one last alert.   
  
TEXT: stop being such a little bitch I'm SORRY okay. I can't help it if I've only heard bad things about a place. Nathan isn't the biggest fan of Lady Price   
  
SENT: I didn't know Nathan ever ate there.   
  
TEXT: he does when he's not getting banned for petty bullshit. SMH.   
  
Max had no idea what SMH meant. She decided to ask literally anybody who wasn't Victoria, later.   
  
SENT: Whatever. If we're going to work together you need to stop insulting my friends.   
  
TEXT: pretty tall order, smallfield. But fiiiiiiiine. I'll put away my claws in case some iddy fee fees get hurt :((((   
  
Was that sarcasm?    
Max reread it twice before deciding that it was quite likely to be sarcasm. Man, she was dense sometimes about that kind of thing, but she wasn't /that/ dense.    
The next text was way more confusing.   
  
TEXT: anyway Max are you still getting breakfast??    
  
What? Max blinked. Why would Victoria care about that?    
  
SENT: Just ate. Why?   
  
TEXT: k fine I get it.    
  
What?? What had Max done now? How had Max eating breakfast merited a response like that?    
  
SENT: What?   
  
TEXT: nothing. see you in class   
  
That was so dismissive, so rude, such a brush off - so why did she feel guilty? She hadn't done anything!   
If this was how text conversations usually went with Victoria, Max decided she was better off not staying in contact (despite the awkward, confusing rush of butterflies which had started to develop whenever she saw the new text alert, a complete clash with the disheartening feeling of frustration actually opening the message usually brought).    
  
No more texts were exchanged that morning. (Max wasn't sure if she was disappointed or relieved. Stupid Max, obviously relieved. Clearly.)   
  
///   
  
Max was daydreaming, again, completely lost in thought as she sat under a tree on the common ground outside the front gates of Blackwell, waiting for the wonderful Kate Marsh to come and meet her.    
  
The sun filtered through a blanket of grey and white clouds, weakly trying to cast shadows. It wasn't good photography light, not to Max, who liked having a little colour in her composition.    
  
She wondered if anybody would ever read her work like her class read into the work of great photographers. If anybody would ever write a book dedicated to her style, her form. What would it be like to hang a photograph in a gallery and know that experts statewide would be drawing real, conclusive analyses from her shadow and light?   
  
A shadow cleaved its way through her distant thoughts and brought her back to here and now, and she looked up curiously.    
"Kate?"   
  
"Not quite," said the shadowy figure, laughing, and they sat down by Max, resolving into Alyssa. Max blinked.    
"Oh, hey," she said, scooting around to better accommodate this new (and definitely not unwelcome) intrusion. "What's up?"   
"I just wanted to give you my final respects before we found you murdered in a ditch somewhere," Alyssa said, and Max stared at her for a good few minutes, trying to work out if that was a threat or a warning.   
"What?"   
"I heard about Victoria volunteering you as her project partner," Alyssa said by way of explanation, and Max let out an involuntary laugh, holding a hand over her chest.   
"Holy shit. I thought you were going to warn me of some psycho coming after me with a gun. I was genuinely worried there for a second."   
"Nah," the other girl replied, "you're probably safe for now. Probably. Who knows, when you have to spend so much time with the Nega Bitch."   
"You mean Victoria?"   
"Yeah. I feel sorry for you. None of us think it's fair that she basically kidnapped you like that. We know you all wanted to work with Kate or Stella... kind of a bitch move of her."   
  
Max frowned.    
  
"Hey, I did kind of choose to partner up with her too, you know."   
"Really?" Alyssa raised a curious eyebrow. Max found that annoying, for some reason.    
"Yeah. I mean, she might be a bitch but she is pulling the best grades in our class."   
Alyssa looked more than a little shocked by this. "Max Caulfield, grade moocher. Are you sure she's not rubbing off on you?"   
"No-" Max said, getting frustrated. "I'm not just using her- I mean, I'm not doing it because we're friends but-"   
Alyssa just laughed, patting Max's shoulder. "I know, Max, don't worry. We all hate her too. Nobody's going to be shocked if you admit you're just catching a lift off her designer tailcoats. In fact, we'll probably just be envious we didn't think of doing it first."   
In the end, it was too much energy to argue with Alyssa any longer, so Max just smiled and laughed in a sickly sort of way. It didn't feel... didn't feel  _ right  _ to think of the project that way. Max didn't want to be some lazy jackass just loafing off while the other person did all the work. She didn't want to be fake and two-faced like she knew Victoria could be.    
As much as she did hate the cruel things Victoria did, she didn't really have any excuse to be just as bad.   
  
No matter how tempting it sounded to bring Victoria down a peg or two. One day.    
No, Bad Max.   
  
Luckily, at the precise moment when an unusual and impassable silence suddenly landed thick and awkward right in the middle of the conversation, Max was saved by the living embodiment of an angel on Earth.   
  
"Kate!" Max stood up hurriedly, grabbing her bag and brushing twigs off the seat of her jeans. "Hey!"   
"Hey Max," she said, giving Alyssa a little wave and smile. "And Alyssa. I'm sorry to steal Max but we've got a pot of camomile tea waiting for us... unless you want to come join the tea party?"   
Alyssa shook her head, hoisting herself up and looking a little bereft. "Nah. I have an assignment in that I've been avoiding for too long. You guys enjoy your cute little tea date though."   
"No, no, wait," Max said, flustered and waving her arms, but Kate just giggled. Max didn't mind, really. She was just a bit embarrassed.   
  
///   
  
The sound of tea cups clinking onto floral saucers, and a murmur of couples talking quietly about this and that, small things. The small tea shop was warm and filled with soft leather seats, mismatching lamps and the smell of coffee and tea, the atmosphere wrapping around Max like a blanket.    
She'd ordered a pot with Kate of camomile tea. It was a pretty acquired taste, but Kate made her a cup that was more milk and sugar than tea and that was okay.    
Kate drank hers pure, making it look like the bitterness was not so bad at all. She drank from the cup and smiled in a way which made Max wish she could stand the taste unadulterated.    
  
The sun poured in the window, and outside Arcadia Bay went home from work by bus and car, sun streaming through dusty windscreens and fingerprints on bus windows, tarmac gleaming like oil.

“So,” said Kate, “how is your project doing?”

Max groaned, and laid her head on the table. “Ughgh, We haven't even started yet.  Victoria tried to rope me into doing some research,  but I ended up getting frustrated and walking out.”

Kate tilted her head and frowned. “What happened?”

“She went on a long rant about my friend’s mom’s diner. I really like it there. It means so much to me, both because of my friend and because I spent so much time there before I moved away. And Victoria was so snobbish about it, raising her nose in the air like she’s better than eating there, and being rude about the food... I couldn’t stand it.”

Kate hummed and tapped her cup of tea with her nail lightly. 

“That does sound rude.”

“Yeah! And then she got pissy with me over eating a ham sandwich.”

 

This made Kate pause her tapping. “What?”

 

Max groaned. I can’t work out why she’s mad. People are so confusing.” An idea struck her, and she sat bolt upright. “Hey. Maybe you can help! You can look at the texts and help me work out why she’s angry!”

Kate thought for a minute, before nodding in agreement. “I’ll try, but Max, you know I’m really not an excellent relationship guru.”

“Th- this isn’t relationship advice!” Max said, flustered and beginning to blush. “This is just work partner advice. Look.”

 

Max pulled out her phone and let Kate scroll up her latest conversation with Victoria, eagerly watching Kate’s face for the different expressions she pulled at the drama unfolding onscreen.

 

“So?”

 

Kate gave the phone back to Max and looked out the window. 

 

“I know this isn’t very charitable or loving of me,” she said quietly, “but I don’t like Victoria very much.”

Max understood this perfectly. Victoria undeniably had bullied Kate. It made Max’s skin crawl.

Kate took a sip of her tea then spoke. “I understand the things which make her so nasty. It’s pretty transparent once you sit down and examine why Victoria is Victoria. That doesn’t mean that I like her personality any better for it which is...” Kate’s lashes flickered downward. “Not very Christian of me. She’s just a common playground bully. A big fish in a little pond, who’s in danger of getting swept away when the tide comes in and makes that pond a great deal bigger. Girls like Victoria don’t get happier after school finishes. Successful maybe. Rich, famous. But not happy.”

 

Max wondered where all this was going. She waited.

 

“That’s why.” Kate’s lips set into a sharp resolve. “That’s why you need to help her like you help me.”

Max felt a stab of guilt deep in her chest. But she hadn’t been helping Kate! Not today! She’d just been burdening Kate with her stupid petty squabbles without even asking how Kate was feeling. She opened her mouth-

“No, I’m being serious,” said Kate, staring Max down. “You need to understand how Victoria works, and then you need to help her, because these are not the texts of a happy and secure girl. That was her way of asking if you wanted to go eat breakfast with her!”

 

“But Kate-”

 

“No buts! You and Warren talk about science stuff all the time, right? So you should set up a new experiment with him. Call it: What Happens When I’m Nice To Victoria Chase?”

 

“B-”

 

Kate’s hand landed on Max’s. “You were there for me when I was in a very, very dark place. You helped me come back out the other side and get help, remember? I never felt more loved than when you stayed up late for me and sought me out even when I didn’t want you to.”

Max blushed even harder. It hadn’t felt all that heroic, those long awful nights spent worriedly typing words of reassurance into the blue glow of her laptop.    
“And now you need to help her. That’s what a good Samaritan does. They put aside their grudges and their personal feelings and whatever happened in the past and they love their neighbour even if it’s hard and unforgiving. So help her like you helped me.”

 

Max was silent, wide-eyed at Kate. She opened her mouth. 

“She- she wants me to have breakfast with her?”

“ _ Yes _ !”

“... What happens if she insults my friends again?”

“You have to be patient with her,” said Kate sagely, bringing the cup up to her mouth for a long sip. “She’s grown up all wrong, like a clematis that was trained onto the wrong kind of trellis.” The gardening metaphor was lost on Max, who had never so much as picked up a trowel, and had very nearly killed her potted plant through over watering. “Letting herself grow naturally is going to be a long and arduous process that might be to much to ask even of you, Mad Max, but if you can set her on the right path...”

“... she might one day say sorry to you?”

 

Kate frowned. “She already is sorry.”

“You don’t know that! Why are you so nice to her when she was so awful to you?”

“She didn’t do it alone, and besides. She did it because she was scared, and we’re all scared.”

“I wouldn’t ever forgive her for her shitty treatment-”

“She apologised.”

 

That made Max stop. 

 

“It was a cowardly apology. She sent me two words over social media. That was all.” Kate smiled a little. “But it was a sign, Max.”

Max snorted a little. Crummy sign. But if Kate thought being nice to Victoria was a step in the right direction, then...

  
“Wait a minute,” said Max suddenly. “When did my photography project turn into the Victoria Chase Show?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i forgot to add any fuckin time travel FUCK


	7. Tarot

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> this was super fun to write. i hope you like it too!  
> (thank you all so much for each and every encouraging comment, they're all so nice and make me so happy)
> 
> MANDATORY LISTENING, this time with more of a vortex club influence!  
> [the love club](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N8aSrLda8_Q) \- lorde  
> [the future](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VLFjW_lgJEM) \- mystery skulls (a really underrated electronic band! super catchy super peppy)

This was the most infuriating week in Victoria Chase’s entire life, and that was including the time she had been banned from leaving the house until the cleaners had cleared all the vodkas bottle from out of her parents’ home after her 16th birthday party (how was she supposed to know that hide-and-drink was a terrible party game to play in a large house?). 

Something had happened to Max. Gone was the Caulfield from the beginning of the school year - silent, watchful Max, who never had the correct answer in class but always got such high marks in her assignments via sheer talent. Gone was the girl who was easy to rile up and never had a witty response to any jab Victoria threw. Gone was what Victoria had come to expect from their meagre, dissatisfying interactions, the cold wall which seemed to exist between them - and in had come a strange and terrifying state of affairs where Max actually noticed that Victoria existed.

As if Victoria had been waving her arms and screaming at a lighthouse with its beam roving over distant waters, so now had the bright glare of Max’s attention finally turned round and focused directly on Victoria with blinding intensity.

It was incomprehensible. It was sudden. It was, without a doubt, completely putting Victoria off her game. Max seemed to be everywhere and all at once, with her awful fashion sense and her awful adorable haircut, and her stupidly attractive face with those sweet doe eyes. She was there when the brick had fallen near Victoria, and when the ball had nearly hit Victoria’s bag, and when Victoria had tripped, and she just kept being there. She didn’t seem to stop.

Take, for example, the time during the week when Victoria had been late for class. She had run at great hurry down the corridor - only to be grabbed and held back by a mysterious assailant. Before she could react, Victoria was distracted by a classroom door slamming open exactly where she would have been, had the mysterious arm grabber not grabbed so mysteriously.

Of course, the arm grabber wasn’t so mysterious. It was Max. Of course it was Max.

 

Then there was the sprinkler incident, when the sprinklers would have soaked Victoria’s new shoes - if Max hadn’t subtly stepped in between Victoria’s feet and the sprinklers, armed with a tatty, bird-shit covered umbrella. It was almost so casual it might have been accidental, but Max had never been a good liar or actress, and Victoria had glared at Max til the other girl had practically run away, tail between her legs.

 

And who could forget the time when Victoria had been sitting on a bench out in the quad, minding her own business, when Max suddenly slammed her books down on the empty bench space beside her? 

Victoria had jumped, half terrified, and moved to yell or scream at Max (maybe both at the same time), but stopped when she saw Max’s white, sweaty face and wide eyes, looking for all the world like she’d just witnessed a murder.

Max lifted her book to reveal a flattened wasp. Victoria hadn’t even noticed it was there.

“ _ Why didn’t you tell me _ ,” demanded Max, in a breathy, desperate tone which did strange things to Victoria’s spine, “that you’re  _ allergic to wasps? _ ”

 

It took a few seconds, but Victoria managed to pull herself together, despite the mental strain she was suffering caused by direct eye contact with Max. “I’m  _ not. _ Couldn’t you have just... shooed it away, or something?”

“You  _ are _ . Trust me. You’re  _ very  _ allergic.” Max seemed to slump a little, before bending and wiping her book free of any wasp detritus on the grass. “Please be careful. If you don’t believe me, you’re welcome to go get stung when you’re nearer the hospital.”

As Victoria had already said - Max was a terrible liar. 

 

The trouble was that Max didn’t seem to be lying.

 

“How do you know I’m allergic? I don’t even know if I’m allergic. How could you possibly - like, at all - know whether I’m going to be hospitalised from one sting?” Victoria sat up, eyebrows furrowing. There was something going on. Something that Max wasn’t telling her. “Have you been snooping through my medical records or something?”

Max began to look very uncomfortable, and started edging away, giving Victoria a small wave and a hurried “see you later”. 

“You come back here, Smallfield!” Victoria stood up quickly, ready to give chase. “How can you know so much about me? Why do you keep appearing all the time? How do you know all these things are going to happen to me?  _ Why do you care so much about me now? _ ”

But Max was already slipping inside the nearest building, making a quick getaway.

 

There was only one thing for it.

 

///

 

“Is Max Caulfield psychic?”

 

Taylor blinked slowly at Victoria, tarot deck paused mid-shuffle in her hands.

“Victoria,” she said slowly, “you can’t ask a dumb question like that to the deck. Firstly, it’s about someone else which is technically prying, and secondly, what the fuck?”

Victoria pursed her lips and frowned. “What’s the point of all this mystic shit if it can’t answer a simple yes or no question? Is? Max Caulfield? Psychic?”

 

Taylor shook her hair, long blonde hair striped by the sun shining through her blinds. A quiet day in the dorms. Birds singing. Students walking and talking outside. Victoria, gritting her teeth and looking thoroughly unsettled.

 

“What’s got you thinking that Max is psychic?” Taylor kept shuffling the cards, letting herself get a feel for each card as it passed through her pink-manicured fingers. “Has she been summoning dark energies to plague your waking hours, dark shadows in the corners of your vision?” Taylor waved her fingers spookily. “Or just your wildest midnight dreams? Though I guess you’d complain less about that -”

The pencil bounced off Taylor’s head. Victoria glowered.

“I wish I had never told you about that.”

“What was it again...? Oh yeah, I remember now.  _ Swoon, Miss Chase, a holiday to Gay Paree with me, humble Max Caulfield? Oh swoon! Your photography is incredible! Teach me everything, and kiss me on the Eiffel Tower _ -”

This time, an eraser bounced off Taylor’s head, and Victoria was taking off one of her own shoes to throw. Taylor waved the tarot pack defensively.

“Taylor, I will not hesitate to email our headmaster the long and drunken love letter you wrote asking him to bend you over his knee and buy you jewellry, along with everyone in our school. Do I make myself fucking clear?”

“Crystal,” replied Taylor, looking offended. “I don’t know why you try to fight it so much though, babe. You’re a big bi mess and you know you are. So what’s stopping you from just admitting you wish Max would-”

“Because she  _ wouldn’t _ , you idiot.” Victoria turned her nose up. “You know who Max is, don’t you? Ice queen. Colder than the other side of the pillow. She’s got talent coming out of her fucking vagina and she’s the only person in photography class I actually have to struggle to-  _ I mean _ , who I least easily beat. And she never even gives me the time of day.”

Victoria frowned at this. “Or... never used to. Recently she’s been all up in my grill. But that’s probably just because I’m helping her with this project. She needs something, she’s going to charm me, and then once it’s done she won’t even look twice at me. Just watch.”

Taylor shook her head and reshuffled the tarot cards. “I don’t know which Max Caulfield you’re describing, because I never had her pegged as some kind of manipulative bitch.”

“That’s the worst part,” Victoria growled, leaning back grumpily against the wall. “She’s not even deliberately snubbing me. She’s not a bitch. She’s a nice, clever, pretty girl - and it’s so frustrating! She doesn’t even know how much she charms everyone with that mysterious quiet girl schtick! Ugh!”

“There there,” said Taylor, only half-sarcastically. “Look. Do you want your cards read or not?”

“Ugh,” said Victoria again, more quietly, and then “fine. Is Max Caulfield psychic?”

Taylor gave her a stern look. “That’s not the right kind of question to ask the cards. It has to be for yourself.”

“You’re making that up. Fine. Okay. I guess my question is... how can I figure out Max’s real intentions?”

“Close enough,” said Taylor. Victoria nodded. That was a perfectly legitimate question to ask, right?

 

Taylor spread out the Major Arcana in a fan, face down, and Victoria had done this enough times that she knew what to do next without Taylor telling her.

She picked the first card, and placed it face down on the floor.

“Past,” said Taylor.

Then the next card, which she placed beside the first - “Present,” said Taylor.

Finally, one more card, from the very middle of the deck. Victoria placed that one facedown besides the other two anonymous cards.

“Future,” said Taylor. 

 

Victoria turned over the first card, the one meaning Past. The Hierophant looked back up at her.

“So,” said Taylor, “this one means... hold on, let me look it up.” She pulled out her phone and tapped quickly. “Okay. Yeah. This one means that in the past you have put a lot of importance in conforming to the group you’re in and sticking to the status quo. You followed tradition and you felt... compelled to join some sort of ‘pre-established group’.”

“Duh,” said Victoria, “the Vortex Club.”

“Yeah, and it’s not reversed, so I guess that means you made the right decision for that time? Or maybe just that you made that decision, rather than trying to be some different hipster.”

 

Victoria turned over the second card, for the Present, to reveal the reversed Wheel of Fortune. 

“Oooh, I remember this one,” Taylor said. “This means that fate is not on your side right now. Have you been experiencing bad luck lately?”

Victoria thought about it, but. All she could really remember was Max popping up everywhere any time something weird looked like it was about to happen. “Not really. What else could it mean?”

“Well... usually something about taking back control of your destiny from the bad spate it’s in. You’ve got to be ready to change, but right now you’re too resistant. Seriously, the wheel is  _ not _ giving you a pleasant time.” 

 

Victoria flipped over the third and final card with a little shiver of anticipation. This was going to tell her the future, and finally, maybe she’d get a real answer. 

 

“The Tower,” said Taylor, before hurriedly scrolling through her phone.

“Well? What does it mean, Taylor? What’s going to happen? Is Max psychic?”

“Bear with, bear with,” Taylor said while making hushing gestures with her free hand. “Hold on, I’m getting it. Okay. Are you ready?”

“Yes!”

“Okay so. The Tower. This means that... something is going to happen which will blow your mind. Something violent and destructive, which is going to shake up everything, and force you to change something.”

 

Victoria blinked at Taylor, her mouth slack.

“That’s not a real answer!”

“It’s not meant to be yes or no!” Taylor rolled her eyes. “Look, it’s supposed to give you insight into what COULD happen to YOU, not someone else!”

Victoria crossed her arms. “So... what does the spread mean then, Miss Smartass?”

“It means... that you need to be prepared to do something you haven’t done before, which the cards say is accept something or someone new.”

Well. Victoria supposed that was clear enough. Let go of the old, in with something radical and different. That sounded... risky. That sounded like something her parents would suspend her allowance over. That sounded like a way to lose friends and alienate the cooler hierarchy of school that she had managed to infiltrate.

“Whatever,” said Victoria, crossing her arms and looking away. “Still doesn’t explain how Max has suddenly gained the ability to see into the future.”

“Hey,” sad Taylor quietly, humming a little and looking thoughtful. “If you really want to know if she’s psychic... why don’t we make some tests? We’ll set them up to look like harmless accidents or something. Then we’ll know for sure.”

“That plan depends on her wanting to save me. Fat chance. She won’t even notice I exist, you know, like she’s done all year so far.”

 

Taylor just smiled and rubbed her hands together. 

 

///

 

Photography class. Victoria watched Taylor scrunch a piece of paper into a ball and aim it at Max’s head when Mister Jefferson wasn’t looking.

There was a stutter - Victoria blinked rapidly, because it was like her vision had just glitched where Max was sitting - and suddenly the paper ball was in Max’s hand, and she was giving Taylor that distinctive Gormless Max Glare, which was kind of vacant - as if the muscles in Max’s face were to apathetic or puzzled to properly frown. Although, of course, haha, Victoria wasn’t desperate enough to analyse Max’s face, haha.

Taylor raised her eyebrows at Victoria. Strike one.

 

///

 

“Can anybody tell me,” askd Jefferson in the voice he used when he was clearly exasperated at his class’s lack of enthusiasm, “why a photographer might want to use a Lippman plate? Anybody?”

Victoria raised her head confidently. She could see Jefferson turning from classmate to classmate, waiting for an answer, but inevitably he would ask her - like he always did. 

_ To create a secure photograph, _ she thought,  _ that nobody could easily copy. _

 

Jefferson turned to the last person he went to before he chose Victoria - Max. It rankled that he lavished so much attention on her, but then again, she did need a lot of encouragement to actually speak in class. Shyness or tactical silence? Ignorance or aloofness?

_ To create a secure photograph that nobody could easily copy. _

 

“Max?” Jefferson said, tentatively, and Victoria’s expression turned smug-

“To create a secure photograph that nobody could ever copy,” said Max quickly, before leaning back in her seat and shrugging her shoulders.

Victoria’s jaw dropped.

 

Holy shit.

Max Caulfield could  _ read minds. _

 

_ If you can read my mind right now Smallfield, _ Victoria thought,  _ give me a sign. Cough. Drop dead. You cannot be serious. _

Max picked up her pencil, and immediately fumbled it. It dropped to the floor. So did Victoria’s heart, straight out the bottom of her chest, as she filled with fear.

_ Oh god,  _ she thought,  _ Max has been hearing all the times I’ve been fawning over her like a sick puppy. _

_ Oh god, she just heard that too. _

 

///

 

Taylor couldn’t work out why Victoria had just grown so pale and quiet, as if she were concentrating very hard on something very far away. The next step of the test was about to go underway and yet she hadn’t given Taylor a single glance since Jefferson had snubbed her for Max.

Then again, she had always been so wildly jealous of success. Taylor rolled her eyes a little. Having the pushiest parents alive would do that to someone. What was more baffling was the way Victoria always completely denied feeling anything positive for Max in any way shape or form, which was the biggest lie Taylor had ever heard (especially after she had found that weird poem Victoria wrote about Max being the “solaris to my astra” or whatever). 

 

The bell rang.

 

“Just a reminder,” said Mister Jefferson, “that you should all be working hard on your paired projects and I want to see some planning next lesson. You will be presenting in two weeks, so please make the best use of your time together. Alright, get out of here.”

 

As the class filed out, Taylor bumped Victoria, knocking her out of whatever gay trance she had been caught in before. Phase two.

The two girls left the room just before Max and stopped by a locker outside the classroom, waiting for the perfect moment - Taylor held her bag ready to drop, Victoria watched for Max. Max appeared, began to walk past. Victoria hit Taylor’s arm, and the bag flew on the floor, strap a tangled mess ready to trap Max’s foot-

-except Max was suddenly holding the bag, and once again giving Taylor and Victoria a blank glare. “Careful,” she muttered, before quickly taking off.

Taylor, personally, counted this as a success, but when she looked at Victoria all she saw was raw fear.

“Oh god,” said Victoria quietly, who had gone as white as a sheet. “Oh god.”

“Tori?” Taylor had only seen Victoria freak out this badly that one time when she thought Nathan had leaked her nudes to the school. “What’s up?”

“One more test,” said Victoria, eyes wide, mouth set in an unsure but determined line. “We have to make sure.”

 

///

 

“Max Caulfield!”

 

Max turned around quickly when she heard her name called, or maybe because she had telepathically heard Victoria thinking about calling out for Max. Victoria didn’t care. She marched up to Max with the fury of a thousand scientific minds burning for answers. 

 

“What?”

“Max Fucking Caulfield. I have one question for you, and if you get it right, I’ll- I’ll buy you dinner.”

Max blinked. “What? Why?”

“Don’t ask, just do it, alright?” Victoria tried to keep her mind blank as possible. It was incredibly difficult. “Just answer my question. Free dinner. Someone like you can’t pass that up, right?”

It was a desperate jab. Max’s expression instantly turned from confusion to the essence of fed up. “Right. Anyway,” and she turned to leave. Victoria almost stamped her foot. 

“Maxine!”

“It’s Max.”

“Maxine Smallfield, what colour underwear am I wearing?”

Max froze. This time, she was definitely confused. The expression she gave Victoria spoke novels.

“Are you out of your mind? Victoria, what the fuck? Are you trying to mess with me?”

Victoria shook her head and laughed desperately. “I can’t even remember what underwear I’m wearing! Fuck you, Max, just tell me what colour it is! It’s a wager! A funny wager! I’ll buy you dinner anywhere!”

Max paused again. “Anywhere?” She said slowly.

“Anywhere.”

Max’s expression slowly turned into a grin. “Deal. If I get it right, you buy me the dinner deal at the Two Whales Diner.” Victoria grimaced. “If I get it wrong... I guess you can buy me dinner somewhere else.”

Victoria stared at Max. Max stared at Victoria. They both turned red.

“If you get it wrong you owe me fifty bucks,” Victoria blurted out, suddenly panicking and flustered. Even Max looked shocked by what she’d just said. Was that an invitation to a date or was Victoria reading into it? Fuck, fuck fuck. If it was an invitation Victoria just ruined it, WHICH WAS GREAT BECAUSE WHO WANTED TO DATE MAX ANYWAY.

“Fine.” Max rolled her eyes.

“So what colour are my-”

“Purple,” said Max quickly, lowering her hand for some reason like she’d been about to grab Victoria’s arm. Victoria blinked. She thought back to this morning when she got dressed. Was Max right?

 

Glowering, she turned away and peeled back her skirt and tights to reveal - purple. Oh god. 

 

Max Caulfield could read her like a church window: covered in stains but ultimately transparent. Victoria’s heart shuddered in fear, and she broke out into a cold sweat.

“Caulfield,” she said quietly, “tell me the truth. How did you know?”

“Lucky guess,” said Max smugly, the bastard, the absolute bitch. “So how about that dinner? I’m free whenever.”

Victoria let her clothes snap back in place before quickly running away without looking at Max, soon to be followed by a worried Taylor who had apparently been watching the entire exchange from around a corner.

 

"... Victoria?" Max sounded suddenly worried, but Victoria was already gone.


	8. Window

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> ho boy!!! i'm so sorry about the wait guys!!! don't worry, i have no intention of dropping this fic. it's just.... super slow. sorry :c  
> i read every single message you guys leave me and cherish them <333 thank you for encouraging me! you guys are so sweet! 
> 
> so. quick summary: max is worried that she's flirted with victoria, and victoria is worried that her classmate is a psychic asshole. pretty average day.
> 
> mandatory listening! (do you guys like my songs so far?)  
> [i saw you blink](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n9hjTZFeSW4) \- stornoway  
> [pretty girls](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fHg5tPRJMb4) \- little dragon
> 
> p.s. find me on tumblr at janecrockeyre.tumblr.com if you have any questions :*

“This is it, Chloe. You’re going to have to do it.”

“Max, no.”

“There’s no other way. It’s time to enact the pact.”

“Max.”

“You’re going to have to decapitate me. Just put me out of my misery. It’s euthanasia.”

“Max! What happened!”

 

Max let herself sink further and further down on the salt-bleached bench, her sneakers scuffing towards the shoreline from their seat on a curve of Arcadia Bay’s beach. A gentle, melancholy kind of drizzle made everything feel damp and uncomfortable, and the sea was ruffled all over as if it were in a very irate mood and couldn’t settle down. The distant hills full of forest were turning blue as the sun set, hidden behind a grey sky. Chloe watched Max sink lower, and shook her head.

This was truly a disaster.

 

“... She’s ignoring me,” Max finally admitted, turning her gaze to the lighthouse on the far off cliff. “I accidentally flirted with her and now she hates me.”

“I have so many questions. How can you accidentally flirt? Why would she hate you because of that? How do you know she’s ignoring you? And finally-” Chloe counted off each point on her fingers. “Why are you so torn up about it? Are you finally going to admit you have a crush on her yet?”

Max just continued to sink down until her body was parallel to the ground, with only her upper back keeping her on the bench. She made a small grumbling sound, and Chloe kicked away one of Max’s legs, causing her to sprawl on the floor.

 

“Chloe!”

“Max!”

 

Max huffed and pulled herself back up into a sitting position, brushing dust off her jeans.

“I, um. Asked her to take me to dinner accidentally. Because she bet me that I couldn’t guess the colour of her, uh, underwear.”

Chloe covered her mouth. “So did you get it right or not?” she said, muffled. Max nodded. “Holy shit, you checked?”

“No! I got it wrong, let her brag about what colour they really were, and then rewound time.”

Chloe paused, and uncovered her mouth to reveal a sly smirk. “So you could say... you uncovered Victoria’s Secret?”

Max hit Chloe’s arm and laughed a little, before remembering that she was upset, and frowned again. “It’s not funny. I guess... I guess I just got overconfident with all this time travelling stuff. I took it all for granted that she’d respond well to some casual, awkward, awful flirting and now she hates me. She never even liked me back. She’s not even gay, Chloe, I just creeped her out with that underwear stunt. Oh god.” Max covered her eyes with her hands, and then peeked through her fingers to the dreary seascape. “I’m a creepy lesbian. Chloe, oh god. I’m a creepy weird lesbian.”

“Jesus Max,” Chloe said, half laughing, half genuinely worried. “Like, hooray for your  _ final _ sexual awakening, but I’m pretty sure that being a creepy lesbian isn’t a thing - you’re allowed to like girls and flirt with girls and that doesn’t make you creepy, dude. You’re not as bad as... say, Nathan. He’s a real creep.”

Max just groaned.

“That’s the real problem, Chloe. I’ve only been able to talk to Victoria since I’ve started using my powers creatively. We don’t know how long I’m going to have this ability! I keep getting intense headaches and I think it’s because of the time travel. What if one day, I lose my power? What if I get ill or- or hit my head wrong, and end up back to normal?” Max looked away, chest rising and falling rapidly. “I’d be back at the beginning again. Weirdo Max. Victoria - everyone - will think I’m awkward again. She wouldn’t want to date someone like me without my powers.” 

“Max,” said Chloe quietly, frowning, “shut up. You are cool - hella cool. I thought you didn’t care about that stupid Vortex Club or the popular kids anyway! What happened to rebel Max kicking her own style, us against the world?”

Max shook her head. “I don’t care about the Vortex Club. But if I lose these powers... it will go back to how it was before. In Seattle. In high school. I won’t be able to talk to anyone.”

“You won’t lose your time thing,” Chloe said firmly, and forcefully. “Don’t even say that. Plus, am I really that much of a consolation prize, dude? You’ve been talking to me for years before you had those powers, and I’m still hanging around you. You gonna ditch me for a bunch of rich kids?”

“Of course not.” Max turned to Chloe and gave her Max Caulfield’s Best Genuine Smile. “You’re my best friend. I know you’ve got my back.”

“And you mine,” laughed Chloe, who seemed happy that her position was still Top Of Max’s Favourite Person List. “C’mon. This turned into a real downer. Let’s go throw some rocks into the sea and get some life back into you, jeez.”

“Alright.” Max trailed after her as Chloe took off down to the shore to look for some good throwable rocks, still feeling uneasy. She couldn’t summon the same conviction. 

 

///

 

Max entered the bathroom to take her morning shower. Victoria was already there.

She avoided Max’s gaze and rushed out of the room, half her face not yet covered in foundation. Max stood still for a good minute and tried not to be upset.

 

///

 

Max saw Victoria across the courtyard. Victoria spotted her soon, though, and turned a corner with great speed. 

 

///

 

Max opened her bedroom door to come face to face with Victoria, who was also opening her door.

Victoria stared at Max like a bunny in the headlights, before stepping backwards and slamming her own door shut again.

It was, overall, a pretty miserable day.

 

///

 

“We haven’t got much time to hand in that project,” said Alyssa as she carefully held up a roll of celluloid and checked the label. “Shouldn’t you be working on it right about now?”

Max made a despondent humming noise and kicked her legs against the table legs. “My partner’s gone awol.”

“Hey, stop jolting the table.” Alyssa sighed as she swapped one roll for another. “What do you mean awol? Victoria go off the deep end at you or something? We were kinda waiting for something like this to happen.”

“We?” Max sat up. 

“Yeah. The whole class. There’s a running bet on which of you two is going to have a melt down in class first. Or die. Or kill the other one. There’s a lot of bets.”

Max stared at Alyssa, not sure if she was being genuine or not. Her deadpan was so straight set, it was like playing poker with a corpse. “Are you kidding?”

“Relax.” Alyssa shook her head. “I’m goofing with you. Though honestly I am pretty worried about finding you strangled on campus one day.”

“That would mean that Victoria actually chooses to stay in the same room as me for more than three seconds. Fat chance.”

 

The photography lab was half-full of photography students working away on their projects or undertaking complicated chemical procedures bathed in red light. In comparison to all the bustle, Max was an island of inaction, completely at a loss for work and not motivated enough to try to do anything else but sit back and peoplewatch. It was a good hobby. Unfortunately, it wouldn’t get her an A grade. 

 

“She’s probably working on it somewhere else then. Victoria never hands in a project late - not to Mister Jefferson. You should probably make sure she actually puts your name on it too, Max. And, maybe do some work for it too. Unless you’ve decided to finally do the easiest thing and take advantage of her like I suggested.”

“No!” Max shook her head emphatically. “Absolutely not. I will contribute to this project whether Victoria likes it or not. I just... kinda wish we were actually working together, like everyone else is. But she won’t even look at me.”

Alyssa shrugged. “Beats me. She’s probably just being a bitch as per usual.”

Max made a noncommittal noise. There was a moment of brief silence. 

“Alyssa, is Victoria gay?”

Alyssa shot Max a weird glance, before looking back at her work. “Wow, way to swing a question out of the blue. No idea, Max. I’m not up to date on the way our classmates swing, but let’s be real. She can’t be a lesbian with a crush that obvious on our teacher.”

That was true. Max thought back to all the times she had caught Victoria sucking up to Jefferson like a swooning oversized leech. It was almost equal to the times she had caught Victoria glaring at her over the classroom since the beginning of the year. 

“Haha, yeah,” she agreed, but Max’s heart wasn’t in it. 

 

///

 

It came as a pretty sudden shock to finally get a text from Victoria, even if it was brutally short.

 

TEXT: need to borrow your copy of 20th Century Lens for the project kthx.

 

Max jumped from her table in English at the feel of her phone vibrating. She checked the message, waited a moment for her heartrate to return to normal, and then replied.

 

SENT: That’s fine. Do you want me to write up any more stuff? I can do more research if you want.

 

TEXT: nah it’s k

 

SENT: Have you been doing the project by yourself?

 

TEXT: duh 

 

SENT: Shouldn’t we set up another meeting to work on it together?

 

TEXT: NO just give me the book in class TYVM

 

Max sunk into her seat, completely at a loss. What could she do? Victoria clearly hated her guts. It was obvious. She had truly and completely fucked it up. There was only one thing she could do. She had her rewind - she could just go back. She could just go back.

 

SENT: Victoria, I’m sorry. I think I made you uncomfortable. But I really want to work on this project with you. I think if we put our minds together, we could make something way greater than if we worked separately. I promise to try not to make you uncomfortable anymore. 

 

And then she waited. And waited. And waited. English class had never been so long and boring. What else was there to do? Work? 

Max tried to concentrate - she really did - but the words swam on the page and the teacher’s voice was a soothing lullaby of soft droning words. She was so worried. Was it normal to feel like this about someone? She’d never really experienced the same level of anxiety and passion about something as stupid and mundane as a text. Max had always been a little too down-to-earth to get the whole dramatic shebang which seemed to accompany romance in the real world - plus the added factor of Victoria probably being straight magnified the situation tenfold. 

No. No, Max had to be sensible. Victoria was just a girl. Max was just a girl, too. There was no romance happening here whatsoever. In fact, Victoria was being kind of a dick. Why would Max like Victoria at all?

 

As soon as her phone buzzed again, Max whipped it out and unlocked it at the speed of light.

 

TEXT: ok fine. meet me @ library after last lesson so we can Finish This. and stay out of my head!!!!! later

 

Max gulped. That was so ominous. What did Victoria even mean by that?

 

///

 

Max found Victoria standing crosslegged, arms crossed, on the first step of the library outside the doors. 

“Hey,” she said with a little wave, but Victoria cut in with a “how many croissants did I eat this morning?”

“Uh...” Max stared at her. “Like... 3?”

Victoria shifted, squinted, then seemed to relax. “Trick question. I didn’t eat any.”

“Oh.” Max noticed something odd. “Cute hat.”

Victoria stiffened. She was wearing a woollen beanie in an oddly Chloe-esque fashion, except the cableknit made it seem so much more sophisticated and bohemian (gimme a break, Max thought). It was oddly shaped though, and seemed to have weird angular ridges in it. There was a little white pompom on top. It was endearing.

“Thank you,” she said guardedly. “Though it’s a little, um. Hobo-chic for my tastes. I just thought it was a little cold out today.”

Max looked around at the cloudy sky and the fellow students in loose shirts and light sweaters. “I... guess? Maybe you’ll be warmer in the library.”

“Oh, we’re not going in the library today.” Victoria walked straight past Max and away from the library.

“We’re not?”

“No. We have to get some photography done today. In a way, it’s a good thing you’re here. I’m sure Mister Jefferson is getting fed up of seeing a million photos of Courtney as my model.”

“Woah woah woah,” Max said, running after her. “Model? Photography? I thought we were still researching? I’m not a good model!”

“Tsch, don’t give me that crap,” Victoria said. “You take selfies. You should be okay with a little exposure. And yes, we  _ were _ still researching, until I finished researching and decided what we’re doing for our project. It was you who gave me the idea, actually, when you reminded me of Richard Avedon.” Her tone softened considerably. “You knew he was my favourite, and you like him too, don’t you? So what’s the problem?”

“I...” Max bit her lip. “I’m not sure I’m... look, selfies are one thing, but it’s completely different when you’re being modelled.There’s so much scrutiny. Also, isn’t it a bit... vain, to use me as a model when I’m on the project?”

Victoria laughed. “Shut UP, Max. You don’t need to play the shy little fawn with me. You don’t need to lie or blush like you do with the rest of the class. Just admit you’re an attention whore already, you’ll fit right in with me..”

There was something weirdly angry about that last sentence. Max huffed. “I’m not. Wait- where are we going?”

“My house,” Victoria said simply, as she checked one of her messages, as if it were not a shock at all. “Oh, look. Here comes our uber now.”

“Wha-?”

A very sleek sedan pulled up at the side of the road. Max couldn't believe something so ostentatious and unnecessary could exist at the call of a mere text.

“If we're going to do a photo shoot, we may as well use some professional equipment rather than the college stock. Now get in the car and stop complaining.”

Max was pushed into the car by Victoria, and the door closed with a firm bang and that all too familiar sense of impending doom which seemed to accompany any time spent with Victoria Chase.

 

///

 

The ride was long. Max watched as the friendly family suburbs of Arcadia Bay streamed past, because every time she dared look at Victoria, Victoria turned her head away. 

One minute, she's pushing me into a car, Max thought. Next minute, she's giving me the cold shoulder. 

She sighed. “Why are you so eager to get me to come with you?”

“I'm not,” said Victoria. “We're just work partners.” 

“Alright,” said Max passively, and the two girls lapsed into a tense silence. 

The rest of the drive was quiet as the town turned to trees, and specks of light rain hit the windows.

 

///

 

Victoria's house was somehow everything Max had been expecting. 

 

The uber dropped them off at a large, ornate gate with an intercom. Max stared as the gates opened onto a neat paved drive with immaculately pruned ornamental shrubs planted with geometric precision on either side. The forest didn't intrude on the neat lawn or the square clipped trees, or the carefully arranged rock feature, or the odd incomprehensible twisted metal wreckages on stone podiums. Victoria caught Max staring.

“They're Cibowskis.”

“Bless you.”

“Haha, funny. Don't you even know who Cibowski is?”

Max rolled her eyes. “A scrap metal merchant?”

“You fucking plebeian. He was featured in the Tate. These cost us 20 grand - each.”

Max decided privately that some people have more money than sense, but kept her mouth shut. “Oh. They're very... unusual.”

“They're shit.” Victoria led them up the path and towards the house. “My mom uses them to impress visitors. She hates Cibowski.”

 

The house itself was a strongly edged creation of lines and angles, with long flat metal roofs extending from glass walls, bolts and cement wiring artfully arranged on the concrete pillars like post-modern echoes of Celtic patterns, and any exposed matte surface painted stark hygienic white. It looked to be about three stories in all, but it was hard to tell when all the walls and roofs were slanted and skewed. 

“So this is what your house is like.” Max gazed in awe, finding it weirdly pleasing. “It's incredible.”

“Hm.” Victoria sounded noncommittal. “What the hell were you expecting?”

“I guess I was expecting something really grand and redbrick. Like a big Georgian estate or something like that. This is... like a space ship. It's spectacular.” Max held her forehead and tried to have a little reality check. “I... I can't believe I'm visiting your house. This is so... Twilight Zone.”

“It's what I do for all of my photography projects. Did you really think I got all those high quality shoots at college?” As they passed a dark green sports car, a convertible model with very smooth rounded lines, Victoria watched Max check out the sheer volume of visible money. “I'm sorry my house isn't retro enough for you, though. You really can't let that antique hunter schtick drop for a second, can you.”

“Don't be stupid. Your house is beautiful. I may love the classics most but that doesn't mean I don't appreciate this architecture.” Max shot Victoria a suitable eyeroll, and Victoria seemed seemed appeased by the answer, even dropping her former glare for a few moments. 

“... Thanks.”

Victoria opened the front door, and Max found herself in a stark white atrium filled with natural light. There was a glass structure on a metal table which probably had a price tag greater than Max’s parents’ mortgage, and Max carefully drew her arms up close to her chest so she wouldn’t knock anything over.

Victoria carelessly kicked her shoes off and into a side cupboard, motioning for Max to do the same, but Max was too busy staring around and taking it all in. This was exactly what to expect from the owners of a successful gallery. Max had previously believed that her family was comfortably middle class, but this hallway alone made her reevaluate her entire social standing. 

It was a beautiful house. Very beautiful, but very cold. It was difficult to imagine Victoria living here as a child. It didn’t seem like a very kid-friendly place.

“What are you waiting for?” said Victoria brusquely, though not as sharply as usual. 

“Just... admiring your house. It’s... wowzers.”

“Wowzers? Christ.” Victoria led Max up some curved stairs to a mezzanine, with pale oak doors and titanium white walls. “I’ll take you to the studio. The sooner we start shooting, the sooner we can finish this project.”

There was an open door along the hall and Max eyed it with curiosity, seeing a messy double bed covered with neutral duvets and a mirror reflecting her own face right back at her, but not managing to see much else before Victoria was leading her down another hall and far away. Through a door, and Max blinked at the assault of so much natural light streaming through large, wall-length windows. There was a typical white backdrop, light diffusers and reflectors and what looked like a box of props, and a black stool tangled in wires and kicked to the sidelines of whatever project was here last. 

“Nice set up,” Max said, taking it all in with an appreciative photographer’s eye. “No wonder you prefer to shoot at home.”

Victoria just hummed. “Stay here,” she ordered, and Max didn’t have time to try to rebel before she was out the door again.

Max didn’t mind. It was a peaceful room - or, well, not quite peaceful, but focused. Full of a calm and driven energy, and full of light even when the artificial lights were turned off. Max walked to the windows and took in the view of the long drive and the shitty metal heaps of expensive junk she had seen earlier, and tried to imagine living in a house like this. It was almost impossible. Max didn’t understand why Victoria would want to dorm at college and give up her comfortable home life. Maybe because it didn’t feel like a home: it felt rather like a large and polished set of what a perfect house should look like, all windows and floors and doors, but no signs of life. Even the messy bed she had seen earlier looked out of place between the calculated corners and colours, like a ruffle in a smooth sheet of paper. A moment of imperfection waiting to be ironed out.

 

Victoria soon reappeared with a large camera box in hand and a binder full of project notes. 

“Mister Jefferson made it clear that he didn’t expect us to be working with a vintage Rolleiflex for this project - it’s fine for us to emulate the style rather than having to source an eight by ten camera. I do want to work with film, however. Editing can only get you so far.”

Max nodded, enthused by the prospect of getting down and dirty with some physical film. “You told him about the project?”

“Duh,” Victoria said, opening up her box and taking out all the tools. “I want to get a good mark, and he’s a renowned photographer. It’s good to build connections early and learn as much as you can while you can.”

“Isn’t it cheating? Like, asking your professor what he wants?”

“The real world cheats all the time. People cheat each other out of opportunities and jobs and relationships out there, Max. Do you really think that plodding along doing your school project like a good, creative student is going to get you anywhere?” Victoria snorted and shook her head. It dislodged her beanie, and she quickly pulled it back down. “It’s not what you know. It’s who you know.”

“I guess.” Max watched Victoria prepare her camera with interest, taking note of the careful and meticulous way she handled each part. “Who’s sitting first?”

“I’ll shoot you first,” said Victoria quickly, “so I can show you how to handle this camera properly. It’s very expensive, and I don’t want you to mess it up.”

“Rude,” muttered Max. “Would you believe I’ve been taking a photography class for the past year?”

“I’d rather believe that you’ve got the hand eye coordination of a crack addict on an inflatable castle.”

Max, very flatly, just replied: “Haha.”

 

The process of setting up the film camera took a tedious amount of time, or so it seemed to Max who had been banned from touching it. The backdrop was exchanged for a grey one (Max did the heavy lifting), the lights were rearranged (Max, again), and the stool was set up to a focus marker on the ground so the model could sit exactly where the camera would focus (Victoria, yelling at Max, in a joint effort of frustration and impatience). 

Finally, the set-up was complete. 

“Make a note of the time,” Victoria said, gesturing to the project log-book they were recording throughout the entire process. “I want to note exactly how many minutes you wasted trying to screw the diffuser pole tighter.”

“Shut up, you're the one who made me roll and unroll the grey backdrop three times before you decided you wanted it.”

“Just go sit on the chair, Yawnfield.”

Max decided that the nicknames were as endearing as they were silly. She sat on the stool and stared into the camera aimed at her face. 

“Testing, testing. Wait, it's not just going to be me, is it? I get to take a picture of you too, right?”

Victoria made a noncommittal noise, hidden as she was behind the camera.

“Victoria. Please? I really wanna try out the process for real. Plus I'm... not exactly the best model.”

“Why not?” Victoria rolled her eyes. “You gonna pull that coy schtick with me in private too?”

“No,” Max said, giving Victoria an annoyed look before switching her gaze away to the windows. “I'm not good at giving myself presence. I'm always an observer. I don't know how to project myself... I don't really have a character to project.”

Victoria seemed to hover, caught between taking a shot and listening. “You have to have a character. That's stupid. Everyone has character.”

“But I've never really... I mean. I don't really know who I am. I've always just kind of reflected off everybody else.”

“How can you not know who you are?”

Max shifted uncomfortably. “Shouldn't we be getting on with the project instead of asking personal questions? I haven't hired you to be my therapist or anything.”

Victoria shook her head. “This is the project. I'm emulating Avedon’s style - he would ask uncomfortable questions to draw out character in his subjects. That's what I'm doing to you. Drawing out your substance.”

Max frowned. “But I don't have any. I'm just Max. Doesn't that mean you're just... manipulating me into looking like I'm something that I'm not?”

“No,” Victoria said, her voice a little softer. “I'm just drawing out something which everybody seems to see but you. Maybe you'll finally realise how much people can see through that act of yours.”

“What?” Max stared at Victoria in shock. “What act?”

“There's something you've been hiding, Maxine. Nobody else has noticed it but me.”

Max’s heart froze. Oh no. Her awkward crush.

“Wh- what are you talking about?”

“You're a terrible liar. I can always tell when you're not telling the truth. There's something you haven't been quite honest about lately, isn't there.”

Cold sweats started beading on Max's neck, little pinpricks of shame and embarrassment. As first confessions went, this one was going absolutely shit. “Like what?”

She tried glaring at Victoria defiantly, but the black fish eye of the camera stared back, and she had to divert her gaze. 

“You know what. The reason why you've been so friendly lately. Why you keep following me and turning up at the oddest moments. Smiling at me.”

Max gulped, but tried to stay confident. It was impossible. Here it came, the question she didn't want to answer. What form would it take? Do you like girls, Smallfield? Are you, in fact, a creepy lesbian? Do you have a crush on me, Max?

She looked at her nails. 

 

“What's the reason?”

 

Victoria checked her camera one last time. 

“Max Caulfield...”

Max shuffled on her chair, heart starting to hammer. 

 

“Can you read minds?”

 

There was stark silence.

Time seemed to come to a standstill, though Max’s hand was firmly down. It seemed that even the birds outside stopped singing. Dust motes hung suspended in the air as if hanging from threads. 

She looked at Victoria in naked confusion.

“What?”

“Telepathy. Psychic powers. Mental invasion of privacy.” Victoria sounded triumphant. “I figured it out. I set you tests and you passed them all.”

“Uh,” said Max, and then: “Um.”

“Knowing my underwear was purple. Stealing my answers. Knowing how to counter all my sentences as if you already knew them! It's so blatant, you aren't even subtle. Did you think you could hide it?”

Max shook her head, still confused. “I'll be honest here. That wasn't the question I was expecting. Surely that's evidence against my ability to read minds.”

Victoria held her hand up, ready to capture an image on her camera. “What were you expecting then?”

“Whether I... I dunno. Something else.”

“What kind of something else?” Victoria demanded, making Max startle.

“It’s not important!”

“It is important!”

“I...” Max looked down and away, before looking back up to the camera, eyebrows furrowed, feeling her face heating up shamefully. Victoria glared, intent and unwavering, through the lens. “I-”

This was it. She had to come clean. If Victoria was beginning to figure out that something was up, her supernatural abilities would be compromised, and who knew what Victoria would do with the information? The best way to distract her, Max decided, was through the truth.

“I thought you were gonna ask if I liked girls,” Max said finally, looking down. 

“Wh-” said Victoria. “Wha...? Wait, what?”

“Um,” said Max, picking at her nails.

“Do you?” The question was immediate and demanding. It was good to know that Max’s plan had worked. Victoria seemed sufficiently distracted.

“I don’t know,” replied Max. “Maybe. I think so. I think I like a girl right now.”

Victoria’s face appeared over the camera, incensed. “How can you not know? You either like someone or you don’t!” She paused. “It’s Kate Marsh, isn’t it.”

“No!” Max looked up at the camera, a little anguished, a lot mortified. “I mean I do like her, she is very cute and sweet, but I don’t think I’m crushing on her-”

“Stella? Courtney? It's Alyssa isn't it. Ms Grant? Do you have a taste for older women?”

“What?” Max shook her head. “No. They're nice and all. But.” 

She held her breath. This was too much, too sudden. “I just know I don't like boys all that much. And the way I like this girl is so different to the way I'm friends with boys, and this is really the first time I've felt like this. Uh. I think that's enough about me for now.”

Victoria was quiet for a while, before she said: “It's alright, Max. I like girls too. And boys sometimes. I had my first puppy crush in middle school on a girl and that was when I realised that I had yet another means of disappointing my parents.”

Max's heart hammered in a way she didn't really want to analyse, and something must have changed in her expression which Victoria found aesthetically pleasing because just as Max said, “Oh”, the camera shuttered and whirred. 

 

Max blinked.

“What was that for?”

Victoria shrugged. “It was... there was a moment where you looked like you were... it was instinct. Anyway, this god damn shoot is taking long enough. We're wasting this perfect natural light.”

Another moment of stillness. Was Max reading into things when she sensed that something had changed in the last few moments? As if there were some tangible sense of kinship between them, a common ground? Maybe not. Max had never been good at reading people.

“Hey. Help me set up another shot, and we'll swap places,” Max suggested, and Victoria allowed it as politely as Victoria Chase ever would, with a carefully nonchalant shrug.

 

A new shot was set up with minimum fuss, and Victoria even allowed Max to help this time. Soon, Max was behind the camera (after having the instructions repeated at her several times in a very severe tone) and Victoria was sat, prim and proper on the stool, staring right at the lens straight down the barrel. The light was a little lower so they compensated for it with some lights and some fussing with the exposure, and now all Max had to do was press a button. She hesitated.

“You got to ask me stuff,” she said, “so I'm asking you some stuff too. That's fair.”

“Fine, but I refuse to answer stuff I don't want to.”

 

Max thought for a second. 

“Why are you mean to people? Like Kate.”

Victoria huffed angrily and rolled her eyes, glaring at Max. “Don't get all high and mighty at me. I don't need a lecture off you.”

“Victoria.” She paused, wondering whether to rewind. Waiting it out. Victoria squirmed.

“She was asking for it,” she snapped unprompted. “She's such a Bible thumper. Handing out those pro celibacy flyers. I know she thinks I'm such a slut because I didn't have one of those creepy purity ceremonies with my dad or whatever. I know what the rumours are about me. Fight fire with fire. If she can't handle the heat she should stop throwing shade.”

Max shook her head, pained at hearing such unkind words said about precious, sweet Kate. “She's not like that at all. She doesn't spread rumours about people.”

“Yeah right. You think she'd still be friends with you if she knew you were a total dyke too?” Victoria was wounded, Max realised, and was throwing out personal barbs to protect herself. Like a beautiful rose bush, all petals and thorns.

“Yes,” said Max simply, though she suddenly felt cold tendrils of doubt. She decided to ignore them for now. “So... you're afraid she's going to spread rumours about you having sex with people?”

“I'm not afraid of her,” Victoria said immediately. “I can destroy her. I'll make it so she can never set foot in campus again without someone ruining her life. I’m the queen of Blackwell.”

Max hummed. “Kate's never gossiped about you around me.” At least, not harmfully, she added mentally. “She doesn't tend to spread rumours about anyone. She's really nice once you get to know her.”

“Oh look at you, Little Miss Marsh Brigade. Why don't you just marry her?” Victoria huffed. “You can swap chastity rings and sing Kumbaya together at Bible Camp!”

Max looked down, and felt very uncharitable. 

“Do you enjoy hurting people?”

Victoria shifted, kicked the stool with the back of her feet, glowered. “Fuck off Max. Just fuck off. You think you're better than me too, don't you? You're so fucking naïve. You just want everyone to be friends. Life doesn't work like that. You use people and you move on and you protect yourself because people are cruel and want to use you too, and I'm just protecting myself from everyone else. You're just being friends with me because I can get you a good grade, and I'm just friends with you because I want your eye for a shot. What, did you think we were gonna bond over a couple of jokes and the fact we like girls?”

Max said nothing, not able to think of a good response. 

Victoria seemed to swallow. Max's silence was blank, accusatory, passive. 

 

“I’m sorry,” said Victoria. 

Huh? Max thought. Did that really happen? Did Victoria really just apologise?

“For what?”

“For- you know what for. Being rude.”

“It’s okay,” Max said, smiling a little. “I was just, uh, what did you say...  _ drawing out your substance _ . And that’s okay. We’re all made of different stuff. I just like being friends with people. You say you use people. But... I don’t think that’s true.”

Victoria frowned. “What do you mean.”

“I mean. I think you like being friends with people too. You’re friends with Taylor, right? And not just because she has something to offer you.”

“Yeah.” Victoria nodded. “I guess so.”

“You’re there for her when she needs you, even when it’s inconvenient?”

“I guess so.”

“Then we’re not so different. And I’m not using you. I. I’ve grown to like hanging out with you, sometimes. It’s interesting.”

Victoria looked into the camera, all doe eyes and open mouth, and Max took the shot before the expression could seal itself back up into a frown.

“You’re messing with me, Max, Quit it. We don’t even hang out.”

“We’re hanging out right now. Hey, wait. Can you take off that beanie before I take any shots?”

“... No.”

“What? Why?”

“It’s. It’s cold in here.”

Max looked around. The sun was still shining outside. “No it isn’t. Bad hair day?”

Victoria ruffled her metaphorical feathers. “I never have a bad hair day. It’s an artistic choice. It’s boheme.”

“It’s silly,” laughed Max, “and it’s not you. These shots are about capturing our true selves or whatever, right? Just take it off.”

“I don’t want to.”

Did Victoria look nervous? No. Must be Max’s imagination. 

“I’m coming to take it off.”

“No!”

“I’m the photographer. My rules. My shot.” Max stepped out from behind the camera and darted to Victoria’s stool, and Victoria leaned away. 

“No.”

“C’mere.”

“No. It’s fine. I’ll go take it off in my room.”

“What?” Max reached out and grabbed the beanie in between Victoria’s flailing arms, but stopped when she felt it crunch and crinkle under her hand. “Do you... have foil in there?”

“What, no. Hey-”

Max took the beanie off, and looked inside. It was lined with tin foil. “Okay. This is probably the weirdest thing I’ve seen you do so far. What the fuck.”

“It-” Victoria snatched back the hat and glowered at Max, dropping it beneath her stool. “It was meant to stop you reading my mind, okay? I thought it might help. I didn’t want you in there without my permission.”

Max stared at her, processing - oh god, what the _ fuck _ \- before laughing. Laughing hard enough that she felt her eyes crinkle, stupid gigglesnorts and dumb noises, but it was too funny to stop - the idea of Victoria hurriedly cramming an old beanie full of tin foil like a government conspiratorist, to stop Max from reading the colour of her underwear through her brain. 

Max had to sit down on the floor. Victoria looked very put out. 

“It’s not  _ that  _ funny,  _ Maxine! _ ”

“Haha- hic- oh my god,  _ Victoria _ -”

“Did you just hiccup? You’re fucking insane.”

“Hic. Oh man. Just. Oh  _ my god _ -”

 

///

 

By the time Max had calmed down and stopped hiccuping and Victoria had stopped sulking, the sun had set too far to recreate the perfect shots they both wanted. Further attempts to set up the lighting were unsatisfactory; the only thing they could do was call it a day.

“It’s a shame,” said Max, as they stood side by side looking out the window together, watching the sun sink into the trees, “that we couldn’t get more shots.”

Victoria said nothing at first. The silence was companionable and Max waited patiently. She was content to just watch the sun.

“We can do it again tomorrow,” Victoria said finally, “after college. We’ll get more shots. I’ll leave the rig like it is now.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes. We need to finish this project. It’s behind schedule as it is.”

“Okay.” They watched a formation of hundreds of tiny birds rise up from a distant tree. It was beautiful. “Um. Are you gonna order an uber back to the dorms?”

Victoria made a noise of affirmation. “Yeah. I’ll do it before mom gets home.”

 

She walked away and began texting; Max wondered for a while. Was Victoria avoiding her mom? Was it just a harmless comment?

 

The cloud of birds continued their graceful dance above the tree as the clouds turned a deep and brilliant orange.

 

///

 

The drive home was quiet, friendly, a little awkward, but not the same pained awkwardness Max might have felt a few weeks ago. Victoria seemed relaxed, seemed happy in her company, even if she was being kinda quiet. The familiar buildings of Arcadia Bay appeared, and Max sighed. 

“Why do you sleep in the dorms at college when your house is so close nearby? I wish I could stay at home.”

Victoria shrugged. “Who’d wanna stay with their parents for longer than they absolutely need to? I’d rather have my own room closer to class.”

“Why?”

“What do you mean why? A dorm is less stressful. No rules or arguments or dumb stressy shit happening, aside from all the other rules and arguments and dumb stressy shit, but at least it’s fun when it’s at college.”

“Hmm.” Max shrugged. “I guess it’s nice being independent for once. It’s weird being here without my parents around..”

“Why did you come here? This place isn’t exactly a hub of activity and creativity. It’s just a stagnant pool. A big stagnant pool.”

“Mister Jefferson,” Max admitted, “but I also used to live here a while back.”

Victoria snorted. “You fucking groupie. But it’s not like I’m any better. Props for actually trying to make famous connections out here in the real world, Max. I’m clearly rubbing off on you.”

 

They arrived at the dorms. Victoria clammed up the closer they got to their rooms, talking less, walking faster. Max just let it happen. She had a reputation to uphold, probably. 

“See you,” said Max, turning into her room with a wave.

“Bye,” said Victoria, stepping into her own room. 

The doors shut.

  
Max kicked off her shoes and laid on her bed. Holy shit. She pinched her own arm sharply and hissed. Holy shiiiit. The feelings in her chest were complicated, so she decided to save them for tomorrow - for the return to Victoria’s house. She thought of crumpled bedcovers, and ugly statues, and cold beautiful rooms, and wondered if she’d dreamed the whole thing up.


	9. Take-Out

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> i actually finished this chapter a while back but kept forgetting to post it because guess which bad boy finally(!!!) moved into university  
> (it's me, i'm the stressed and forgetful student)  
> i've been reading your comments though and every single one is beautiful and joyful. one day i might print them out and put them in a little decoupage of motivation <3
> 
> oh by the way cw: they smonk the weed in this chapter. i myself have only smonked like maybe 0.2 weeds in my entire life so please forgive any inaccuracies
> 
> MANDATORY LISTENING OF THE WEEK:  
> [such great heights](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i_6KTZgayxg) \- streetlight manifesto (thank you candycoatedfury!! 10/10 song super hype)  
> [resonance](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8GW6sLrK40k) \- HOME/slimetony (check out slimetony.tumblr.com for more chill low-rez jams)  
> [everything in its right place](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CDcpWmHMP7k) \- radiohead (i like radiohead a lot)

Another day, another set of classes that seemed to merge into one long tedious blur. The sun shone uncertainly through a patchy grey sky and in the shade it was possible to feel the first crisp chill of autumn approaching. 

Max spent all day in awful, wonderful anticipation. For what, she wasn't quite certain: but she thought about it instead of doing her classwork, caught up in half imagined ideas of huge, beautiful, cold houses. A crumpled unmade bed in a perfect model home. Had that been Victoria’s room? 

It looked too clean, too mature, the room of an adult who had put away all bright and childish things. To imagine Victoria sleeping in a room like that was frightening, in a way. Max couldn't imagine growing up in a place like that. Her home had been a messy bundle of wood floors and comfy sofas and the human ephemera of a working family, full of stuff and junk and piles of paper. 

A place to make mistakes. A very imperfect place.

 

At lunch, she received a text which distracted her as she was walking to the cafeteria. 

 

TEXT: same place x 

 

A little kiss. A cute bee. It was so much that Max walked into Stella.

“Hey, watch it- Max?”

“Oh, sorry Stella, I-” Max considered rewinding, but then she'd have to receive the text all over again, and that would probably kill her. “My fault. Not looking.”

Stella shook her head and readjusted her bag. “No harm done. Just another symptom of society turning us all into brainless technology zombies.” She waggled her fingers and did a little sarcastic voice. 

“Technology is bad and Thomas Jefferson was a witch,’ Max replied, laughing for the first time all day. “I feel like a zombie today. I mean, the craving for brains is new.”

Stella nodded knowingly. “No sleep? I didn't realise you were such a party animal. Were you in that bunch of students who got caught last night drinking in the park?”

“No way. Just a night owl watching Netflix til 3 am.”

“I know that feel.”

There was a pause, and Max tried to think of something to say. She liked Stella, but small talk really wasn't her strong point. Like a niggling itch, her old anxiety began trickling back, a crippling fear shading her outlook and muting her, afraid to mess up and say something wrong-

“Oh yeah,” said Stella, breaking through Max's sudden mute barrier, “you wanna come hang with me, Warren and Brooke this evening? We're hitting up the beach. I'm gonna get some photography done. You down?”

Max suddenly felt silly for worrying. She was doing great, no time travel powers required. “Yeah that sounds- wait. Shit, I can't believe I nearly forgot. I'm going over to Victoria's house tonight again.”

“Victoria's house?” Stella repeated. “...  _ again _ ?”

Max felt her cheeks heat up. “The photography project. She's got loads of neat equipment that she's sure is gonna help us out.”

Stella let out a high whistle. “Wow, I'm pretty envious. I bet she's got an entire studio set up. I guess having tonnes of money will buy you a better grade, right?”

“Not if you take crap photos,” Max said. “I just hope I'm doing the money justice.”

Stella frowned. “This just isn't fair. The two best photographers in the class teaming up together with the best set up. There's no way you're getting below a 95% for this project.”

Max's blush extended to her ears and what felt like her neck too. “The best? Man, I don't know about that.”

Stella laughed. “Well, you're definitely the modest one. You guys are like chalk and cheese! Nobody thought you two would get along long enough to take a shot but you're going over her house tonight! What's it like? Is it big?”

Their voices hushed down and Max checked the hallway quickly. “Huge. Three stories. And it looks like a crashed space ship. It's so cool.”

“No way. Is it fancy?”

“Super fancy. I felt myself getting cheaper the more time I spent there.”

Stella's eyes went wide. “Did you meet her parents? What are they like?”

Max paused. “I don't know. I haven't seen them. I guess they're out a lot on work.”

“You should try and butter them up. If they like you, they might offer you a wall in the Chase Space, right?”

Max shook her head. “I don't think my stuff is the kinda stuff they'd like. What I got from their house was... it was a whole different level to my style.”

“Don't be so harsh on yourself! I bet Mrs Chase would love to see your stuff. Especially if you're a friend of her daughter, right?”

“We're not...” 

Max was stuck for words. Were they friends? Just colleagues? Competitors? 

“... not ready to display any of our stuff yet. We're still shooting.”

Stella tilted her head, but Max was feeling evasive. She avoided her gaze. 

“Hmm. Well, you must be doing something right to get taken home by Victoria.”

Max blushed even harder and Stella burst out laughing, giving Max a cheeky wink. “Just kidding. Hey, I'll see you round Max. Ciao.”

“Bye,” said Max weakly, waving her off. 

 

///

 

Victoria was leaning against the car, a packet of doughnuts in one hand, a pair of fancy shades in the other. No beanie today, Max noted. No secret tin foil stuffed behind her ears. 

“Gee, finally,” Victoria drawled, waving the doughnuts. “I brought snacks. Don't tell my diet.”

 

Max felt a little shiver of excited anticipation, imagining that beautiful house and all the hard work waiting in the studio for them, the two of them, together. 

“You don't need to diet,” Max said bluntly, not thinking before she spoke, and Victoria puffed up like a hissing cat.

“That's- sh- shut up Caulfield. Get in the car.”

 

The ride was a little less awkward this time. Victoria was happily tapping away at her phone, and Max was enjoying some sweet doughnuts. There wasn't much talking, but the silence wasn't oppressive. It was almost companionable. 

“Ew. Is it just me, or is Daniel really creepy?” Victoria suddenly said, completely unprompted. 

“From our photography class?” Max thought about it. “I don't find him creepy. Why?”

“Really?” Victoria held up her phone to Max, and showed her a soft pencil sketch of a mystery girl. It was a new post on Daniel’s Facebook page. It was a truly lovely piece of work. “He sounds weird. And those cringey meme shirts. Ugh.”

Max shrugged. “He's actually pretty sweet. He drew me once and it was so good - he asked me, so it wasn't like he was stalking me or anything.”

Victoria snorted. “He probably has a huge crush on you. He totally pervs on all the girls in our class.”

“You think so? I don't know. I just think he's a nice guy. A little awkward, but he's okay. I like hanging with him.”

“Max and Daniel sitting in a tree,” Victoria snickered, but Max just laughed. “Christ Max. You're a cold blooded friendzone expert. Wasn't teasing Warren enough for you?”

“Ew,” said Max, sticking out her tongue. “I mean, Warren's okay, he'll find a nice girl one day. But not me.”

Victoria snorted. “You're so diplomatic. All of these awful two-out-of-ten boys trying to take advantage of your extremely low standards and you want to call them okay? Just admit you don't like them - wait. Do you actually dislike anybody? Like at all? Or do you just Disney princess your way through life?”

“Of course I dislike some people,” Max said. 

“Like who?”

Max thought of a red jacket, sandy hair. Echoes off bathroom tiles. A boy with a gun.

“I don't know. Some people.”

Victoria gave Max a very shrewd glance. 

“Wow, thanks Max.”

“Wait, not you! I don't dislike you!” Max burst out, mortified. “I wasn't implying- I mean-”

Victoria just hit her arm with a smirk. “Shut up Max. I'm fucking teasing.” There was a beat of silence. “So you're saying you like me?”

Max sunk into her car chair. “I don't dislike you.”

“What a shitty compliment.”

Another beat of silence. 

 

“You're pretty cool,” admitted Max, looking out the window. 

The ride finished not long after that.

 

///

 

Max felt absolutely exhausted. She and Victoria had worked in a fever, taking shot after shot of each other on the stool in the studio. The light was good despite the slight cloud cover and they took advantage of that, dispersing shadows, casting light in bright and new ways. 

She drooped on the stool, her back sore and aching from being kept upright for the last photo. Victoria shot her an annoyed glance. 

“Stop wiggling.”

“Yes ma'am.”

That earned Max a snort. 

 

Max's mind drifted, and she stared at a reflection of the cloudy sky outside on a nearby prop mirror. She wondered how meteorologists predicted tornados. She imagined herself building up inside a cloud, becoming heavy with pressure and being pulled this way and that by the wind, feeling herself wind into herself and falling down in a chaotic, destructive swirl like some kind of weird superhero. Hurricane Maxine. Wherever she stood she would wreck buildings and wreak havoc. It was a fantastically awful daydream. 

 

“What were you thinking about?” Victoria broke through her reverie like a sun beam through a crack in the curtains. “You looked like the most tragic of lost girls to ever cry a single, solemn tear.”

“Just thinking about the weather,” Max said. “Wait, did you take a picture?”

“No,” said Victoria evasively, which sounded more like a solid yes to Max. She sighed. 

“I'll help you fix up the camera again. I wish you'd warn me dude, I'm probably completely gorming out.”

‘You looked fine. Don't worry about setting up the next shot - look, we're losing the light, and frankly I'm starving.” Brushing her hands down her skirt, Victoria stood up and began packing up for the night. “Today’s a pig out day. I want noodles.”

Max jumped down from her stool and began helping Victoria, feeling a pang of hunger herself. “Should we go back?”

“Not yet. We've still got some time before mom gets home. We'll just order noodles and stay here for a while. Why, you got somewhere you wanna be?”

Max thought about Stella, Warren, Brook. They would probably still be happy for Max to join them. She imagined sitting in a small corner booth somewhere, cracking the same jokes she always made to her friends, having a fun time, doing the same old shit.

“Not really.”

“Great. So you don't care if we go back a little later, right. Hey, we could bake.”

Max frowned. “Like cakes?”

That made Victoria laugh in a shocked, disgusted way. “No you fucking- Max, please. Don't get prude on me. You gonna squeal?”

“No,” said Max defensively. “I'm not a total square. It's just not my thing.”

“Maybe you need it to get that stick out of your cooch,” Victoria said while shooting her a look. Max bristled, then realised that Victoria was joking with her again. Maybe not in an entirely malicious way - she rolled her eyes and laughed. 

“Nah, it's lodged up there pretty tight. You're gonna need a blunt about the size and shape of a crowbar for that.”

Victoria laughed again, ugly high notes and snorting, an unguarded response. Max thought it was the most charming thing she’d ever seen Victoria do.

 

///

 

Victoria's kitchen was, of course, immaculate. Perhaps no cooking had ever been done here, and they all lived on takeout. Max couldn't see a spec of cooking oil anywhere near the hob, no cooked in grease in the oven, no food or drink packages on the counter or used plates and cups. It added to the overwhelming feeling that everything in the house was fake as a movie set. 

Victoria ended the call on her phone. “I'll cover it. But you owe me a chow mein.”

“So you're saying I owe you a meal?” Max hummed and wiped her fingers along the squeaky clean counter, seeing if she would leave a mark. “From what I remember, I did offer you one from the Two Whales.”

“Ugh, I'm not that desperate.” Victoria walked out, and Max wasn't sure if she was meant to follow. She stood awkwardly in the clean white kitchen. 

That didn't last long. The temptation overwhelmed her. She ran to a cupboard and sneakily opened it, looking inside - and wow, all of the food inside was pretty top brand stuff, no bargain basement tins for this family. Let's see... boxes of quinoa, what looked like kale chips, fancy organic jam and jelly, farm-grown vegan muesli. The kind of stuff Max saw in articles online about healthy dieting for the middle class. 

Next cupboard was plates. Ordinary enough. 

Her hand was on the third cupboard when Victoria reappeared with a small backpack, and she had to pull her hand down and look innocent. 

Victoria stared at her. “What the fuck are you-”

 

<<<

 

Victoria reappeared with a small backpack. Max was casually leaning against the counter.

“Hey.”

Victoria dumped the bag on the counter. “Time for a toke before the delivery arrives. Go turn on the extractor fan.”

“Are you smoking it in here?” Max looked about at the clean family kitchen. “Won't your mom notice?”

“I'm just going to roll in here then we take it out back. Duh. Need the fan on for the smell while I roll.”

 

Max turned her back on Victoria, who had started some kind of ritually complicated mess with various suspicious items from the backpack, and looked eagerly for a fan switch. After she found it, she opened the windows too for good measure, since the warm cabbage smell was beginning to irritate her. 

She wasn't sure how to feel about it. If Chloe were here, she’d be over the moon at the chance of a free bake. Maybe she should take a leaf out of Chloe's book and try being more adventurous, less pansy. 

She did want to impress Victoria. Just a little bit. Or at least not have Victoria look at her like a prudish normie nerd, with a mocking eyebrow and an unpleasant twist to her mouth. 

 

“Alright.” Victoria was zipping up the bag, and Max felt her breeze past to the door to the outside. It opened, and she was pulled by the arm into the garden, into the fading light of outside. 

It was a subtle kind of fade. She noticed it because she was already framing the scene into a photo, an artwork, and she knew Victoria was doing the same thing too. Analysing every angle from her mind’s eye, framing it and casting it. Right then, Max was framing the shot of Victoria standing still on a beautifully manicured lawn against a disturbing sculpture made of tortured metal, roll of paper in her mouth, lighter flicking little bursts of yellow against her face as she tried to ignite it. 

 

Max felt lost. There was an odd kind of danger present. She was trapped here in this large house with no way of getting back. The risk of getting caught somehow itched under her skin, as if what they were doing was really so bad. 

Please officer, I didn't take part, I just watched it happen. Just like I always do, Max thought. 

 

Victoria sucked in as the roll caught and finally dulled to a red glow. The smoke hung blue and heavy in the late summer air. 

 

She coughed only a little bit. 

“You sure you're gonna pass up on the opportunity?” Victoria held it up to Max. “Live a little, Smallfield. You afraid?”

Max shook her head. She was fed up of watching, never taking part. There were no police here. There was only her and only Victoria, and Victoria was expecting her to chicken out. She took the roll. 

 

“No, shut up. I know loads of people who smoke.” Correction: it was mainly only Chloe. “Hold on a second.”

 

Max held it to her lips. It had lipstick on it, a nude shade. She hadn't realised Victoria was wearing lipstick. She gulped, and realised she had no idea what to do: or rather, she only knew the theory from Chloe, and not the practical side of it.

It was, overall, a very cautious affair. A careful drag, and she forced herself to swallow a cough after, because otherwise it felt like a weakness. 

Victoria took it back and shook her head.

“Guess you're not such a delicate, innocent doe as you make yourself out to be. I bet you've got a real nasty streak, Max.”

“Not really,” admitted Max, her voice low from the burn. She wasn't a regular smoker of any kind. 

 

Victoria sat on the edge of the plinth that the indecipherable sculpture was standing on and blew out a small cloud. 

“Yeah yeah. You're too nice to hate anyone.” She shrugged. “Even me.”

“Not too nice. Just too afraid.” Max sat beside her with a sigh and took back the blunt. “I used to be really afraid of standing up to people. I figured it was easier to stay quiet and make myself less noticeable than try and pick a fight.”

“Huh.” Victoria watched her smoke. “So you were always just too chicken shit to fight me in class?”

Max laughed. “Maybe. But you're not that scary. I just... never really knew why you had it in for me so much.”

 

Victoria was quiet. Her cropped blonde hair caught one of the last beams from a sunset weakly breaking through the clouds, her face half cast in shadow from the large house. 

“Since you can read my mind - no, I'm not gonna let that go - I may as well come clean. I always... admired your work. Do you remember when you asked me whether I liked your still life photos? I said they were awful. That wasn't true. They were okay. I just hated them because I knew that you could do better. Your style isn't like that. Your style is candid and personal. It made me think you were just coasting, floating along on your talent, not putting in any work.”

Max looked at her shoes and picked at loose skin on her fingers. Well, Victoria wasn't exactly wrong. Max hadn't really been working at full capacity. Hell, she'd let Victoria do most of the work for the project. 

“We're at a fucking exclusive college, Max. This is an opportunity to get ahead and get in the business early. I've been working my fucking ass off all year while you've been breezing through it and we're pulling the same marks in class. It's fucking infuriating. Do you know how dangerous you'd be if you just... knuckled down? And saw me as an actual competitor??”

Completely conflicted, Max shook her head. “It's not a competition. We can both be good at photography without screwing each other over.”

“No, Max, you don't get it.” Victoria took the blunt back and angrily smoked it. “All my life, the only thing expected from me has been perfection. Everybody is a photographer now - if you want to be the best, there is no room for error. You have to stand out. You want to be the best, don't you? You want to be noticed, be employed. We want to be famous. That means we have to challenge each other. We have to use each other as inspiration. What's your inspiration been so far this year?”

Max shrugged. “I don't know. I guess... Arcadia Bay. Coming back home. It's been weird.”

“Coming back home?” Victoria squinted. “Oh. Right. You used to live here ages ago. Imagine coming back to such a shithole. I can't wait to leave.”

“Don't you like it here?”

“Fuck no. It's tiny. It's full of assholes. It's like a big pit you can't escape, like a huge echo chamber scrutinising everything I do.”

Max smiled. “So you only like gossip when it's not about you?”

Victoria stared at Max, then laughed. “You sly fucking bitch. Fuck you. I mean, you got me. I'm a petty little bitch and I love drama, I'll admit it, but I'm an excellent photographer and social climber.” Victoria let her smoke breathe out slow and tumbling after a long draw, letting it waterfall out and up and away into the still air. “I'm not trying to be a better person. I'm just trying to get noticed.”

I'm just trying to get noticed. The phrase stuck with Max, and she replayed it in her head, over and over, like a stuck CD. Victoria wanted to be noticed. She wanted it so badly she would scream and stomp her feet and do awful things to be noticed. 

 

“Don't worry so much about what other people think of you,” Max replied finally. “Who needs all that stress. Just do what you want to do.”

Victoria shook her head. “I can't.”

“Just do it.”

“Fuck off.”

Max took the roll from Victoria's hands and pressed her lips to where hers had been just seconds before.

 

They finished the blunt between them by the time the delivery arrived, and Max didn't feel any different, except slower maybe. It was an odd feeling. She was used to the wrenching pull of her hand through time, ripping causality apart by the seams and forcing herself through - but she was aware now that she was merely a passenger who'd figured out a loophole in the one way system. Scars would heal around her. Tempus fugit. Things would flow on. 

“Let's see, chicken satay, a chow mein, we got sauce, we got prawn crackers. Extra noodles? Whatever, I'll take it.” Victoria was opening the bag while Max was examining the fascinating marble pattern on the countertops. 

Everything was becoming so much. 

“Let's go sit in the lounge. We can put on Netflix.” Victoria side eyed Max. “Don't spill anything. We'll die.”

Max giggled. “But I'm clumsy.”

“My mother will sue the shirt off your back.” Victoria didn't look like she was kidding around. That just made Max giggle even more. 

“Okay.”

Victoria levelled Max a very scrutinising look, or more scrutinising than usual, considering that Victoria usually stared at Max with level 10 scrutiny anyway. “Christ. Smallfield, are you high?”

Max thought about it. She shrugged. “I don't know. Are you?”

Victoria crossed her arms and concentrated. “A little bit.”

They grabbed the food. Victoria led them both out of the kitchen and down the hall, but maybe Max was a little more clumsy than usual, and maybe there was a magnetic attraction for disaster activated on expensive things when she passed nearby. 

Whatever the reason, it happened before Max could even realise she'd knocked something over. She had brushed past a small table, and then there was a smash, and then a:

“Fuck, Max! The vase! The wedding anniversary vase!”

Max turned round and there it was on the floor, a beautiful delicate thing in smithereens, egg blue flower pattern porcelain shattered on the hard flooring.

“Uh oh.”

Victoria seemed speechless. “My mom...”

Max felt a small rush of horror in her stomach. “Was it expensive?”

“Everything in this god damn house is expensive!”

“Do you guys have insurance?”

“Max you idiot! We have insurance but that's not the point - she's going to go ballistic. She's going to go batshit. You're fucked!”

Max thought, what about super glue, could we tape it back up? Could we just buy a similar replacement and pretend it never happened? Or maybe- 

“Oh yeah,” she remembered with a grin. “Don't worry about it.”

“Don't... worry about it?”

“Yeah.” Max shifted the hot boxes of food around on her arm so she could raise them without difficulty. “I can go back in time. Stay right there.”

“Go back in time?” Victoria looked furious, looked exasperated. “You cannot have gotten this high off a single blunt. What the fuck?”

“I'm serious! Watch this.”

Max raised her hand- 

 

<<<<<

(God, time travelling was weirder like this, seeing each second rewind and feeling it too like little conceptual strands of hair, that she tugged back into an unnatural position-)

 

-until Victoria led them both out the kitchen and down the hall. Max breathed a sigh of relief. “I'm back!”

“Back from where?”

“Back from the future - the vase thing. You know. The wedding anniversary one.”

Victoria stopped walking. They had reached the vase in the hall, now complete and whole and on its table. 

“The what?”

“That one-” Max pointed, before realising that Victoria didn't remember Max smashing it because it was in the future. Duh. “Don't worry about it. (Again.)”

Victoria raised her shoulders. “You're still hiding something from me.”

The words washed over Max like an ice bath. “Huh.”

“I never told you that was my mom's wedding anniversary vase.”

“Oh. Um-”

“You know stuff you're not meant to know. You're always in the right place at the right- the right time.” Victoria finally looked at Max. Her face was focused and frightening. “Is it- you can travel through-”

 

>>>>>>

 

Victoria led them both out the kitchen down the hallway. Max followed behind quietly, retreating back into her own head. 

It just wasn't the right time to tell Victoria. Wasn't the right moment. How was she supposed to let Victoria know that the only reason they'd been hanging out so well was because Max had a real life cheat code? 

It just wasn't worth it. 

She edged past the vase carefully, and they made it into the lounge. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> don't worry i'm already working super hard on the next chapter in between all these essays i keep forgetting to do. I WILL NOT GIVE UP ON THIS FIC IT'S MY CHILD NOW.
> 
> speaking of which, would you guys be interested in a kind of fan-facebook group/page? it'd just be me posting various music/art/writing i do, being super chill, and hanging with you guys making that sweet sweet content. let's talk chasefield aus.


	10. oxblood heels

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> i'm back from the grave hello  
> it's been wild guys, sorry about the delay but i am knee deep in coursework hell 
> 
> anyway have some soft girls doing soft girl things, having a great gay time, with looming coursework deadlines hovering over them
> 
> mandatory listening:  
> [girls](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QkubQCI4Fxo) \- the 1975  
> [thirdofmay /odaigahara](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6GqgNebPm50) \- fleet foxes
> 
> and remember, dear readers, that i do love you <3

“Alright, let's see...” Victoria took a seat on a small fluffy poof on the floor. The lounge was sumptuously decorated with faux fur white rugs on white leather sofas. White walls, white floors, stunning vertical blinds - and a big collection of DVDs under a TV the size of a small car.   
“Holy shit.” Max stared at the thing of beauty in front of her. “This is perfect for binge watching things.”  
“It's HD and 3D. Netflix connected too, but my DVDs are in the left section of the cupboard if you want to watch one of those instead.”  
Max scooted over and had a look. Things she expected - Clueless, Legally Blonde, Mean Girls - sat side by side with artsy modern foreign films she didn't recognise, right by anime both obscure and popular - Akira, Sailor Moon, Ghost in the Shell.   
“Woah. Um... what do you recommend?”  
Victoria shrugged. “Pick three at random.”  
Right. Max closed her eyes and pulled out a box.

“The Girl Who Leapt Through Time?” She started sweating nervously.   
“Yikes. Pick something more light-hearted.”

She tried again.   
“Puella Magi Madoka Magica?”  
“I said light hearted, holy fuck Caulfield.”

Her next random DVD draw was Back To The Future. 

At this rate, Victoria would guess her secret in no time.   
“Just- put something you like on Netflix.” Max gave up. The next DVD she pulled out would probably be called ‘Yet Another Hint That Max Is Gay For You And Also Can Time Jump’ with her luck. Victoria hummed and scrolled before settling on a gross comedy, something Seth Rogan might have made. Did she really like this kind of thing? It seemed more like the dumb kind of movie someone like Nathan Prescott would watch.  
Nathan Prescott. Did she still hang out with him? Max settled on the sofa uneasily, a good distance away from Victoria.The idea of being in the same place that Nathan might visit often unsettled her. He was violent. Did Victoria know that he had a gun?

“So,” she said nervously.   
“So.” Victoria replied in a flat, bored voice.   
Max still felt airy and light. She didn’t dislike it, but she didn’t really like it either. It was putting her on edge. Her hand stuttered on her lap, like a twitch.  
“Does your mom mind that you go back to campus late?”  
Victoria shrugged. “I don’t stay late a lot. I’m usually out again before she can see me.”  
“Oh. Huh.” Max pressed her lips together. Try to hold in the nosiness, Max. She failed miserably. “You avoid her?”  
“I just want to avoid getting lectured about something. She’s always on my fucking case.” Victoria twiddled with one of her nice pearly earrings, frowning. “It’s easier to just do my own thing.”  
“Strict?”  
“Yeah.”  
Max couldn’t relate, not really. Her parents were pretty chill. “That’s a shame.”  
“Moms are always psycho.”  
She gave a non-committal hum as her answer, thinking of Chloe’s own situation at home. “Sometimes moms are nice. Then it’s usually the dad who’s super overbearing.”  
“Not my dad.” Victoria scoffed. “What’s he going to do, write a nasty article about me for his weekly review? Whatever mom says goes. He’s just there to back her up.”  
“Jeez.” Max didn’t really know what to say, so she tried to weigh in on the topic. “My dad is definitely the stricter one of my parents. He doesn’t say much. Kind of anti-social.”  
“So that’s where you get it from,” Victoria quipped drily.   
Max laughs. “I can be social! It’s just tiring. People are weird.”  
“So are you.” Victoria settled back into her seat and shook her head. “There’s something about you. Sometimes you say things which sound really arrogant but then you go off and make friends with Daniel Dacosta, of all people. You just don’t care, do you?”  
Max stumbled over her words a little. Was that an insult? “I’m... not sure what you mean-”

The sound of a car pulling up on the drive made Victoria sit bolt upright in her seat. She quickly turned off the TV, before fixing Max with a wild look.   
“What-” Max began, but Victoria put a hand over her mouth immediately. Max tried not to breathe, hot and damp, onto her delicate expensive hand.  
“Shit. Shit! My mom’s home early. Fuck, you need to go hide in my room, like now.”  
“Now?” Max was pulled up by Victoria. “But which one is it?”  
“The one opposite the bathroom, just- go!”  
With an extra push, Max was falling out of the living room and into the hall. Quickly, she ran up the stairs - but just as she reached the top, a key started turning in the front door lock-

<<<

On the landing, she tried door number one. Linen closet. Door two - Bathroom. And a key started turning in the front door lock-

<<<

Door three was opposite the bathroom, and when she opened it, a long bedroom opened up before her. This must have been Victoria’s room, because there were fashionable and expensive clothes scattered over a stately chair, a messy double bed with furry blankets on it and - Max blushed when she saw it - a pink lacy bra hanging from a bedknob. 

She closed the door just as she heard the faint sounds of a key, turning in the front door lock. There were footsteps that faded - as if the owner was walking to the kitchen. The scrape of a stool. A sudden murmur of voices. Max put her ear against the door to hear better.  
“... told you... mess in here, clear out your...”   
Max pressed her ear even harder til her cheek went white.  
“... having people over when we’re not home...”  
Then came Victoria’s voice, presumably saying that she didn’t have anybody over. Then, again, the mysterious deep voice of Victoria’s mother, rumbling louder and louder.   
“... sneaking around underneath our noses. We set clear rules and yet again you have completely undermined our trust. Who knows what kind of person-”  
Footsteps starting coming up the stairs. Max jumped back with a gasp. Shit, did she need to hide? Dropping to a kneel, she saw that under the bed was impossible due to some large boxes. There was nowhere else. Where did the door at the other end go?  
Opening it revealed an ensuite bathroom (how fancy and how extra, she thought), which again had nowhere to hide as the shower had only clear glass in front of it. The footsteps were right outside the door. If only she had more time - 

<<<<

Desperate, Max whirled around before spotting something odd - the left wall seemed to end earlier than the opposite one did. Creeping over, she discovered a walk in wardrobe (because of course she did, what else did she expect from Victoria), parallel with the room and separated by the wall. Rows of velour and velvet and muted soft fabrics hung like very expensive tapestries over shoes in every colour and size imaginable. A sudden rush of curiosity and intrigue rushed through Max and dropped in the pit of her stomach, exacerbated by the awful adrenaline of running from Victoria’s mother. She felt itchy inside. Her hand came up to run along the fabrics, feeling each one pass under with a soft swish, taking in the gentle smell-  
The footsteps were right outside the door. Her hand raised up a little farther-

<<<<

Quickly, she climbed over the shoes and shuffled behind a rack of large coats, the fur getting into her nose and making her sniff involuntarily. Oxblood heels squished and squeaked under her ratty sneakers and she kicked them aside to settle down without falling over, head buried deep in the scruff of the fur coat, pressed against the wall, arms clutched tightly by her side, nose and mouth and eyes enveloped by Victoria’s clothes. She hoped against hope that the coats were just long enough to hide her legs. 

The door finally burst open. Max’s hand clenched involuntarily.   
“I told you. There’s nobody here. Are you done now, mother?”  
There were heavy steps, coming closer. The bathroom door creaked.   
Max held her breath.  
“I told you. I don’t want you doing these things in my house. Bringing god knows who home. Drinking. I don’t know what to do with you.”  
“Ugh. I haven’t been drinking.”  
If Victoria was surprised that Max was nowhere to be seen, she didn’t sound it, which made Max wonder just how many people had hidden in her closet.   
The footsteps got even louder. Max felt her nostrils flaring. She was going to sneeze. She could feel it. 

“You ordered a take out. I told you. No meat in the house. No fats, no processed foods. Is that what you’ve been living off at college?”  
Victoria just grumbled. “No. I just didn’t want to cook.”  
“You’ve left a mess in the kitchen. This isn’t what I raised you to be - a fat slob. We’re not the kind of family who orders take out when we’re hungry for no reason. And that’s not even to mention the drugs-!”

Max honestly couldn’t believe what she was hearing. What kind of mom calls her daughter a fat slob? She didn’t know that Victoria was breaking any household rules - the very thought made her break out in sweat - but it sounded... really strict. And she definitely didn’t like the way she said “that kind of family”.

“I’m sorry, jeez.”  
“I want you to go back to college tonight. Over and over again you prove that you cannot be trusted alone in the house. You’re off the rails, Victoria.”  
“I’m sorry.”

The footsteps walked around the room again. They came back to the walk in closet. Max, once again, held her breath and kept as still as physically possible. There was no noise. A gentle swish, the groan of a coat rail. Max felt a coat move as a rail was examined further down. Sweat began to make her palms hot and uncomfortable. Her head felt heavy and bulbous, and sore.

“Mom,” Victoria said, in a voice that dripped with resigned but taut impatience.   
“Oh, I know what you keep in here.” Her mom replied with an equal tautness, but seemed to finally be satisfied that it wasn’t a person. Max blinked. 

There was no reply from Victoria. The heavier footsteps walked away, quieter and quieter, until the bedroom door slammed. She stayed stock still, scared that Victoria’s mom was still there, or that she was listening at the door. For a moment, the oppressive atmosphere of a heavy storm stifled all movement and sound.  
Until the coats Max was hiding behind were jerked apart by a red faced Victoria. The sudden light made her eyes wince, and her headache began to grow again.

“I could see you in there,” she said, very quietly. “I could see your sneakers. As if I would ever wear anything so worn out.”  
But there was no bite in her voice. There was nothing really there at all, and with a sigh, her shoulders slumped. “Thank you for hiding. You did it so fast, I was sure you hadn’t made it.”  
“Why does your mom hate visitors so much?” Max whispered. “Why did I have to hide? I’m a respectable person.”  
“I know. But my mom doesn’t believe that anybody I invite over is respectable anymore.” Victoria looked angry, the kind of worn down, habitual anger that never really goes away. She gave Max a hand to climb out of the coats.   
“You have so many clothes,” Max said without thinking.   
“What, you think looking this good is cheap?” Victoria replied, finally letting go of Max’s hand. “Mom’s gonna take a bath soon. We can sneak you out then.”  
“What about the project?”   
“I’ll go get everything and bring it to college. We’re done now, I think. Then we can-”

It was at this point that Max let out a quiet “oh” as the pain in her head throbbed to full potential, expanding like a tight balloon, blacking out her vision and her hearing. The ringing in her ears - backwards whispers and tinnitus whines - physically hurt her and grated against the sensitive nerves in her teeth. She felt herself kneel, slowly, quietly. 

For a second, there was nothing but blackness, and soft carpet on her cheek.

When she opened her eyes again, she was lying on Victoria’s bed, her scruffy trainers on the expensive fur. Max looked around. Victoria was hovering over her like she wasn’t certain how close to come.   
“Mm... sorry,” she said quietly, raising herself onto her elbows and wincing as the pain in her head once again throbbed and stuttered.   
“Max, what the fuck,” Victoria whispered, hands resting on the bed just before Max’s knees.   
“It’s just headaches,” she muttered, pinching the bridge of her nose. “I’ve been getting them a lot lately. I’ve been... uh, overdoing it too much.” Time travelling too much. Today, she pushed her boundaries too far, and now she was being punished for it. “How did I get on the bed?”  
“I helped you walk over.” Victoria stood up. “You should go to a doctor or something.”  
“It’s fine,” said Max quickly, wondering how she would explain being a walking paradox to a doctor. Trying to tell anybody about it caused too much difficulty and questions. “I just gotta rest for a bit.”  
“Really?” Victoria seemed discontent, agitated: Max didn’t want her getting suspicious, so she put on her best face and finally sat herself up fully.   
“I’m great. Maybe I should go home soon. It’s been a long day.”  
“Max-”  
“It’s okay.” Max took a deep breath and gave Victoria a huge, winning smile. “I had fun today. We should hang out more often.”

From Victoria there was no response: except, her eyebrows slowly raised, and her eyes widened, and Max looked away hurriedly because her eyes were still sensitive to light. 

///

They bundled the work into a bag, taking care not to bend the film and ruin their precious photos. As Victoria’s mother took a shower, Victoria hurriedly snuck them both out of the house, hands pushing Max down the drive quickly but with a practiced ease that could only come from sneaking people in and out many many times. The Uber came after twenty minutes, when Victoria kept Max hidden just off the quiet road out of sight of her house by pushing her into a bush. They didn’t speak much then, too afraid of getting caught still. There was a strange danger, still itching at Max.

As soon as they bundled into the cab, Victoria seemed to relax, and by extension Max did too. Her head still felt awful, but it was easier in the quiet. Max was glad the driver didn’t put on the radio. 

“Sheesh,” Max said, expelling a breath she didn’t know she was holding. “That was tense.”  
“Yeah, well.” Victoria looked out the darkening window at the passing trees. “I wanted to come back to college anyway. She drives me up the wall.”  
“Is it always like that?”  
“Yeah.”  
“Wow.”

Victoria stared out the window a little longer before seeming to remember where she was, and looking back at Max with a little hair flick and a focused, confident expression. “Get some rest tonight, Smallfield. Tomorrow we’re going to finish this project for good - I don’t want you yawning and fainting your way out of doing some actual hard graft for once. Then we can submit it to Jefferson.”  
“I’m looking forward to getting it out of the way,” Max said truthfully, but something in that sentence made Victoria’s eyes narrow for a split second before she once again looked out the window.   
“Right. Then things can go back to normal.”  
“Yeah, things-” Max began, before faltering. Did she want things to go back to normal? The sudden frustration she felt at the possibility that this was all the Victoria she was going to get after the project was done was confusing. Sure, she was a nosy person, but this nosy?   
Victoria would probably appreciate no longer having to put up with Max to get good grades. Maybe they’d work together on projects in the future - but Max couldn’t help but feel disappointed in herself for the little pang of sadness and betrayal she felt when she thought of Victoria cutting ties til then.  
Try as Max might, she couldn’t change the fact that they weren’t friends, not really. Victoria had never said it. Maybe it was time to let this whole thing go, after all.   
“- things will be... quieter,” Max finished.

They mostly spent the rest of the ride on their phones. 

///

When they got back, they walked to their rooms quietly - aside from a few inconsequential sentences about this and that - through the darkened dorms, past quiet rooms, after the sun had long set. Max paused outside her door and looked at Victoria, and wondered if she also sometimes got eaten up thinking about things that might happen. Victoria turned and looked at her expectantly.   
Suddenly, the anxiety came rushing back for one moment, the fear she had always associated with Victoria.   
“Did you have fun tonight too?” she blurted out, heart racing.  
Victoria stared at her.   
“Go to sleep early, Caulfield,” she said, and unlocked her door, and went in. 

///

In the dark, on her bed, Max lay down and thought. What did Victoria really mean to her? Did Max really, really have a crush? It felt like it. Her face was always warm around Victoria, and her heart beat louder, and despite everything she was filled with the need to know more and more about her.  
But it was difficult. After this project, she would have to be careful. When there was no material need to hang out, there was no guarantees that Victoria wouldn’t blank her out again. She’d get hurt. Or, at least, she felt like she’d get hurt.  
And Victoria wasn’t perfect. She was still nasty sometimes. Mostly. 

Max thought about her promise to Kate. It seemed so long ago now. Maybe it was a lost cause.

///////

Brrrr. Brrrr. Brrrr. 

Max woke groggily. Her phone was buzzing repeatedly. 

Clumsily, she slapped it off the bedside table. Fuck. Motor control not especially high at this time of the morning, Max. Instead of reaching down to grab it, she just-

<

Brrrr. Brrrr. Brrr- 

Max lifted the phone and read the screen with unfocused eyes. It looked like an unknown number. 

TEXT: u think u can hang with the rich kids bitch 

TEXT: know ur place 

At first, after the rush of anger, she thought: Victoria. But then she thought again. It didn't seem quite like her syntax. There was something familiar about it, something awful. 

Probably Nathan, she realised with an eye roll. What the hell had she done now?

Class was uneventful: the clouds outside began looking heavier and heavier, dark with promise, dense. Everyone seemed to be in a bad mood. Kate seemed distant and depressed again, and Max spent some minutes with her, worried about a relapse. It seemed undue. Kate held her hand and promised her that if she felt worse, she would tell Max, but right now she was just having a bad day. 

Alyssa seemed snooty. Stella was too busy talking to other girls to talk to Max. In the corridors, there was an atmosphere of watching and waiting, tense expectancy. Max felt uneasy. Maybe it was her headache, maybe it was the weather, maybe she was just put off by that threatening text, but things just felt wrong. 

At lunch in the cafeteria, she sat by Kate, and they dipped their heads together.   
“It feels wrong,” she confessed to Kate. “I feel like somebody's, watching me.”  
Kate looked concerned. “Why? Who?”  
She showed Kate the text, and told her what she did yesterday - Kate frowned, troubled.   
“I haven't had a text like that in a while. Are you sure it's Nathan? He's been quiet recently.”  
“I'm not sure,” Max whispered. “But I wouldn't be surprised. Have you seen him in college?”  
“He might be skipping a lot lately.”  
“... Do you think he means... me hanging out with Victoria?”

Kate nodded. “I don't know. I hope not, but I feel like that's a good bet. I certainly don't think it's Victoria. I've had threats from her before but she's friends with you, right?”  
Max looked down. “Maybe. I don't know. But I'm sorry she threatened you. It's not right.”  
Kate hummed and stuffed her mouth with her sandwich.   
“Anyway, changing the subject,” Max said quickly. “I’m super nervous. We have to present the project to the class soon. Together. I hate presenting.”  
“I know,” Kate replied. “Do you want to practice beforehand, with me?”  
Max shook her head uncomfortably. “No, it doesn't matter. I'll just... try and soldier through it. Hey, is your project ready? What's it about?”  
'Its nearly ready!” Kate swallowed the last of her sandwich and smiled. “My group have been working on some really cool stuff. I wasn't sure about it but the pictures came out really well! I hope we get a good mark - I'd show you the photos early, Max, but I've been sworn to secrecy until the big reveal. Well, it's not going to be very big, really...”   
She trailed off with a wink, which was so cute Max almost died. 

/// 

Victoria couldn't make it to the library - her text was cryptic and implied total non-negotiation on this matter - so Max sat there alone during her free period and started putting the presentation together using all the notes Victoria had made. Victoria promised to scan and send the photographs that night, which was promising - Max hadn't seen the developed copies yet and she was excited to see the product of all their labour. There was also a little time to do some extra research, the stuff she had neglected to do earlier, so she found herself nose deep in a bunch of frustratingly unspecific photography tomes and studies. 

The rain started to get heavy outside, fat globs that hammered the windows. It was so dark that Max was glad the library lights were on. This was a dire warning that winter was only a few months away - the days of hot sun and long light evenings were coming to an end, sooner than later. And yet Max felt excited about that too, just a little. Summer was hot and stifling, and it felt like her brain heated up and made stupid decisions from a lack of blood flow. So many stupid decisions. 

Her eyes drooped as she tapped the information onto the powerpoint, the lull of the rain and the gentle clatter of other people's computer keys sounding like a very pleasant white noise. It would be nice to take a nap. A long nap, right on the desk. She reread the sentence about Avedon's early years again and again, and tried to form it into her own words. Click click click. The rain persisted. 

A hand landed on her shoulder and she jumped and squawked “who-” just as the mystery shoulder grabber said “hey Max-”

“Oh my god.” Hand on her heart, Max turned round in her chair to look up into the face of Warren. “Jesus, Warren. You just took five years off my life. I'm going grey.”  
“Wow. Then you'd look even more like Mad Max.” Warren took a seat by Max, looking almost as shocked as she was, but still laughing. “Are you okay?”  
“No!” Max laughed too. “I thought you were - I don't know, it scared the crap out of me. I was like, this is it, I guess I'll just die.”  
Warren looked at Max’s screen with interest. “What's this? Looks like a boring history lesson.”  
“It's coursework. Photography. We have to do a kind of, I don't know, homage-cum-biography thing. Ours is on Richard Avedon.”  
“I don't know who that is,” Warren said bluntly. “Is he famous?”  
“Very - for photographers, I mean.”  
“Huh,” said Warren. “I didn't know there were famous photographers. It makes sense though - you know I love my famous directors and cinematographers.”  
“Yeah, those are kind of similar, I guess.” Max thought about it. “Like, each one has their own style, and some get to work with celebrities, and film makers and photographers have to really reveal their subjects to the viewer in a particular way.”  
“What's Avedon's way?”  
Max hummed. “According to Victoria, it's honesty.”  
Warren laughed. “She doesn't know what honesty means. So she bullied you into choosing him, then?”  
“No. It was a joint decision.” Max punched him gently on the arm. “Stop being mean.”  
“Sheesh, okay.”

Max's phone buzzed: another text from Victoria telling her that she would see Max in her room at eight. Max's stomach did a flip. Ugh. Stupid, treacherous body.

“I thought you hated her, anyway.”  
“I did.” Max closed the messages and spotted the anonymous texts from that morning. “Hey, Warren? You're a geek, right?” She pulled up the texts and put them in front of his eyes. “Is there any way to find the owner of a private number?”  
“Hmm.” Warren concentrated. His eyebrows shot up. “Woah, these were for you? This is messed up. What is it talking about?”  
“I... think it's because I've been hanging out with Victoria maybe, which means it could be one of her friends.” Max mouthed “Nathan” at Warren silently, and he frowned.  
“I hate that guy. What's his problem?”  
“How would he know, anyway?” Max didn't like it. “It’s not like me and Victoria walk around together on campus. She was avoiding me for ages.”  
“Why?”   
Max blushed. “I don't know. But it's fine now. The point is, I feel like... I feel like I'm being watched.”  
“Super freaky.”  
“Yeah.” Max sighed. “You... remember about the... bathroom thing, right?”  
Warren nodded.   
“Well, I don't know what to do.”  
Warren paused before putting a hand back on Max's shoulder. “I'll help you out.”  
“You don't have to,” Max said, suddenly feeling guilty. “What can you do, anyway?”  
Warren shrugged. “I'll think of something. I'll MacGyver it.”  
“You can't MacGyver it!”   
“That sounds like losing talk.”

Max took a while to finish the text side of the project before emailing it to Victoria. Warren was distracting, and the work was still a little dull - but she didn't feel quite so alone. 

///

When she walked back to her dorm, she was utterly drenched from the rain, bag protectively hidden under her arm. Her shoes immediately went onto the radiator to dry, and the wettest of clothes were discarded into the laundry pile - god, Max really needed to do her laundry soon, she was running out of clean socks.   
Wet, tired and ready to take a nap, Max laid on her bed in just a bra and her jeans, staring up at the ceiling and taking a break from all that thinking. She switched her fairy lights on and put on a little gentle indie music, because she really was just that hipster, and started feeling a whole lot better than before.   
Sometimes things got scary. Sometimes things happened that she wasn’t able to deal with. Sometimes, it rained heavily against her window while she took a break.

Her eyes shut. She started drifting off, ragdolling on her bed-

Knock knock. 

“Yeah?” she said sleepily.  
“I said I’d be over at eight. I’m coming in.”  
“Wait-”

But Victoria was already bursting in, brown manila envelopes under her arms, face flush with excitement. “The developments came out really we-”

Max yelped and scrabbled for blankets as Victoria dropped the files, then hastily tried to recover her dignity. “Wow, Max, you’re being a little forward, aren’t you?”  
“You’re the one who -! Argh!” 

Max leaped off the bed, hand extended-

<<<<

-and grabbed a relatively clean shirt from the wardrobe, flinging it on just as Victoria burst in the room. “The developments came out really well and I think- uh.”  
She looked at Max, who was flushed, kneeling on the floor, with messy hair.   
“... did I interrupt something, Smallfield?”  
“No. Nope.” Max stood up and smoothed down her hair with her hands, trying to act completely natural and failing miserably. “Hey yeah I’m super excited to see those prints. Lemme just.” She kicked a dirty shirt under her bed, hyper aware of the possibility of wet dog stink after being caught in the rain. “Would you rather do this in your room?”  
“Here’s fine.” Victoria sat primly on her bed, casting curious looks around slyly at all of Max’s stuff. “This room is very... you.”  
“Uh. Thanks. I guess.” Max sat on the other end of the bed, at a very polite distance from Victoria, who then scooted closer. Max couldn’t scoot away any further without falling off the bed. “So, did the photos turn out blurry?”  
“One or two did,” Victoria said, pulling out the glossy prints from the envelope carefully. “But these are all... extremely good. Look.”

She gave them one by one to Max, who switched on the overhead light and pored over them hungrily. Victoria was right. They were good. Not just in execution - crisp detail a hint of soft focus in the background, something lovely and diffused about the natural light in the artificial environment - but in the subject matter too. There was Max, looking bashful and awkward, but she had to admit it was flattering. Another shot, looking like she was daydreaming - maybe the most truthful shot so far. One shot she didn't like, where she was looking directly into the camera, and there was an expression on her face that was maybe hungry, or determined, but was kind of goofy. 

It was the photos of Victoria that were the most stunning. Her face seemed to glow. The high arch of her cheekbones, the planes of smooth skin - her black and white portraits looked like old glamour photos of famous models and actresses. Max tried not to stare but they were just so enchanting.   
And then the one shot - the one Max knew she would love to keep - of Victoria looking to the person behind the camera with such an unguarded, out of character expression, lips slightly parted, eyebrows lilting upwards, something vulnerable, something young. 

Max’s internal dialogue took a sharp left away from “wow” to “oh no, oh god”. There was no way she could lie to herself about it anymore, no way she could avoid it. There, on her unmade bed, while the rain clattered against the window, lit up by soft fairy lights, with Victoria beside her and Victoria in her hands, Max realised that she was in deep, fast, and with no way out.   
She had a crush of monstrous proportions on Victoria Chase.

Victoria, mistaking Max's grim mask of internal panic as dissatisfaction, tried to take the photo back.  
“What, what's wrong with it? It's shit? Fine, I mean, I guess we won't use that one but - what, is it me? I thought it was dumb too, I just wanted your- well, whatever, it's shit-”  
“-no!” Max burst out quickly. “No. No it's. It's super good. You look- it's- I like it.”  
Victoria drew her hand back, blush shining through across her nose and cheeks. “Oh. Well.” She adjusted her seat. “If you want toot your own horn, or whatever. Modest Max, right?”  
“It’s not just mine. It's all of these.” Max felt her heart bursting out of her chest but struggled to keep her voice normal and natural. “The work we did together is even better than my usual stuff. It's focused and it draws you in and. I guess. I guess that I'm kind of proud of us.”   
Victoria made a choking sound, but when Max whipped round to look at her in concern, Victoria had converted it to a cough and was frowning like nothing had happened. “That's. That's nice of you. I'm. Proud of us too.”   
Max smiles despite herself at the slight praise, because she could tell that for once Victoria was telling the truth.  
“But,” Victoria quickly said, changing the subject, “the real question is whether Mr. Jefferson is impressed. Are these A grade material? Sure. But if we present them in a dumb fuck way, we'll get Bs, and I don't think I can suffer through that. Capisce?”

Instantly Max received a shot of hot and nervous adrenaline to the heart. “Oh. The presentation.”  
“What, you've done it, right?”  
“Most of it.” Max felt ill. “It's just. Standing up in front of the class... that's the nightmare scenario. I'm. I'm gonna stutter and be awkward and freeze up, and we'll get downgraded. I'm really bad at presentations. Like really bad.”  
“It'll be fine, Max.” Victoria looked down at the photographs with a hint of a confident smirk, the picture of quiet satisfaction. “I'll do the talking. Just stand there and look pretty.”   
“N- not sure about that-” Max choked out, face turning red at being called pretty, and Victoria seemed to catch herself and turn an even deeper red.  
“Or something,” she snapped. “Whatever. Let's just add the photo scans to the presentation. We're so close to finishing.”

In the giddy haze of emotions and hormones and oh god Victoria called me pretty fogging up Max's rational thinking, on top of the nerves, she felt a pang of sadness, because she didn't want this soft moment to end.  
But it would. And there was nothing she could do but play the same moment over and over again. But that wasn't what she wanted: she wanted more time to hang out that they would both remember and enjoy. But that wasn't how it was. Max had a huge crush. Victoria had a deadline.

///

As the rain continued as heavy as ever outside, and they polished the presentation together on Max's laptop, she felt the minutes slip past acutely until the inevitable time when Victoria stood up.

“I think we're done.”  
“Yeah. And it's really late.” Max yawned and sprawled into the space left by Victoria, which was still warm. “Thanks for coming over and stuff. We worked really hard today.”  
“Well, someone needs to corral your lazy ass into action.” Victoria laughed lightly and opened Max's door, hovering on the boundary and shooting Max a quick look.

“What?”  
“Nothing. Just. Listen, you'll be fine on the presentation. Just focus on the audience. Give them all your energy and your enthusiasm and you'll be fine.”  
Max hummed uncertainly. “... Thanks, Victoria. You too. Goodnight.”  
“Goodnight.”

The door clicked shut. Max listened to her cross the hall and enter her own room. With a sigh, she rolled over on the bed.

///

SENT: Hey, Chloe? I'm in gay hell and there's no escape. Just thought that was important for you to know. That's all.


	11. crushed velvet

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> we're wrapping up the fic, folks, and i'm gonna get real emosh about it. 
> 
> [me and mrs jones](https://youtu.be/mWOTdt9Bovk) \- billy paul
> 
> IT'S DATE TIME

“Alright, class. I've done a preliminary scan of the presentations you've submitted and I have to say, I'm very excited to see these live.”

 

Max and Victoria swapped glances with each other from their seats next to each other, and it seemed like everyone else in the class also glanced in their direction too. They'd been getting glances all lesson - Max and Victoria, sharing a table. It was unprecedented. 

“From all of you,” Mr Jefferson stressed, waving an inclusive hand. “Every single presentation given to me has been creative, thoughtful and well researched. What differentiates your grades now is your ability to present to the class.” 

Max immediately started sweating. 

“Anybody can read from a sheet of paper. I'm looking for confidence. Charisma. Charm.” Jefferson made eye contact with some of the quieter students, and Max was no exception, though she desperately tried to avoid it. “This class isn't just about learning the techniques of photography - it's about getting you ready for the life beyond Blackwell. I know, I know, the school year is really dragging on. But trust me. It will end sooner than you think.” 

Oh god, Max wasn't ready for life after college. She was about to have an existential crisis. She could feel it. 

“Part of getting ready for your bright future careers is knowing how to present to your peers and professionals. Body language. Eye contact. Engaging gestures.” Jefferson demonstrated, and despite her nervous panic, Max had to admit she was drawn in. “You've got to figure out how to give people a show. Give them a persona they can really relate to, a story they can engage with. I know confidence doesn't come over night.” And now he was definitely looking at Max. “But if you believe in yourself... other people are more likely to believe in you too.”

Victoria watched, puzzled, as Max slowly sank into her chair a little deeper. 

“Remember, you're presenting next lesson so if you and your team need to do any last minute prep, make it sooner rather than later so you can email me the updated slides.” Jefferson clapped his hands together. “So. Let's get on with the class.”

 

///

 

Afterwards, when Victoria took off with a wave of her hand and a “ciao, bitch”, Max took her time packing her stuff back into her bag, slowed down by the feeling of inescapable dread hanging over her. Confidence. Charisma. Charm. None of those things were even vaguely Max-adjacent, let alone personality traits she could switch on at her whim. Making eye contact was the worst. Having to look someone dead in the eye and watch their little microexpressions change as they realise just how boring and awkward you are - it just sounded like hell to Max. Victoria would probably get off on it.

Victoria seemed to get off on a lot of weird and scary things. Like weed. And cyberbullying. 

 

Her heart rate increased exponentially as she imagined standing up in front of Taylor, Kate, Stella, Alyssa, everyone, and stumbling over her words, going bright red, stuttering, blanking, forgetting how to speak English, probably blurting out some incorrect bullshit. Her hands even began shaking a little bit just thinking about it. 

C'mon Max, she thought sternly. Don't get nervous. It's just for the grades. Victoria will do all the speaking anyway-

 

“Max, come here for a second.”

 

Oh shit.

Dragging her feet like she was approaching the chopping block, Max approached Mister Jefferson behind his desk. He gave her a concerned look.

 

“How are you and Victoria getting along on this project?”

“Sir? We, uh. We're getting along fine? Why?”

“Would you say the workload has been spread out pretty evenly between you two?”

“Yeah, absolutely,” Max lied. “We’ve been doing it all together.”

“And I don't want that to change.” Jefferson gave her a look like he was cutting straight to her psyche. “I know you're something of a wallflower, Max. You've got talent. But you never seem to take the limelight for yourself.”

Max said nothing. It was kind of true. 

“I don't want you hanging back while Victoria does all the showmanship for both of you. One of my marking criteria is good teamwork - and I can't give marks for teamwork if one half is pulling all the weight of the presentation.”

Max looked at the floor and scuffed her feet. “I know, I'm just. Not good at people.”

“Not good at people?” he repeated. “Look at the photos you take. You're very good at people. The portraits in the portfolio you submitted seem like you can read people extremely well. You get their character, their real character, right on the nail, not just their projected façade.”

“Sir, I don't know...”

“It's this incisive perception you should be using to carve out your place in photography, Caulfield. Not good at people. What makes you think that?”

“It's...” Max picked at her jumper. 

“Look at me, Max.”

She looked up obediently and immediately felt uncomfortable, because he was being so kind, and she was so nervous always.

“It's hard to explain. I just don't get people sometimes. I don't understand them. I feel different and it's hard to fit in- it's stupid.”

“It's not stupid.” He smiles gently and shook his head. “You are different. You've got talent. Weaponise your differences. Turn them into what makes you stronger. I know you can do it. You've got such potential in you - stop sabotaging yourself.”

“I... okay. I'll try.”

“That's the spirit.” He slapped the desk and pointed to the door. “Alright, I'm done with you. I won't keep you prisoner here any longer.”

“Thank you sir,” Max said, and quickly scuttled from the classroom in relief. 

 

Mr Jefferson was such a great teacher. Max just wished she could live up to his high expectations. She didn't understand what he could see in her - this potential, this insight - and she wished she could just. Not be a disappointment. 

 

///

 

It was still raining. The leaves on the trees around Blackwell were drooping to the floor and a light mist had rolled in from the sea. It was unusual weather for this time of year, but it was wonderfully atmospheric - hazy headlights on the road and glassy puddles, and Max liked the refreshing feeling of rain and mist in her hair. It fogged up her camera lens something fierce though. Today was a good day to retire the camera and just relax. 

 

She was hungry too. Maybe it was time to go get dinner at the Two Whales and catch up with Joyce, since Max was missing some of that wholesome second-hand motherly love. 

She felt restless. Jefferson had fired her up, made her feel on edge, like she was wasting time and needed to just act. Do something. Carpe diem. 

There were some boys in the quad playing in the rain, kicking puddles at each other. Birds were flitting from one dripping branch to another. Everything was so peaceful. 

 

SENT: Hey Chloe. Hungry?

TEXT: you know it max 

TEXT: you hankering for some hot waffle action 

SENT: I'm waffle crazy.

 

Of course Chloe would want to have dinner with her. It was practically a tradition.

 

Sat on the steps into the dorm between Courtney and Taylor was Victoria Chase herself, huddled into her warm cashmere sweater, taking shelter from the drizzle. 

When she saw Max, she waved. Max was struck with the memory of what felt like years ago, such pointless hostility. 

She was touched. Victoria's attitude was almost a complete 180.

 

“Hey,” said Max, approaching them cautiously. Victoria was being friendly, but she didn't trust the other two just yet. But they seemed indifferent - lazy glances up and down her outfit, half hearted waves - while Victoria so casually gave Max a smile.

“Smallfield,” replied Victoria. “You want me to move? I'm afraid you're going to have to pay the toll.”

“What's that?”

“I don't know yet. Some favour or something I'll decide on later.”

“Alright. You'll have to make do with an IOU for now, I guess.”

Victoria gave a long suffering sigh. “Typical. You couldn't afford my kind of favours anyway.”

But the joke had no bite. Max just gave Victoria a reprimanding look, and she rolled her eyes before moving aside for Max to walk through.

 

She was halfway up the stairs when an idea occurred to her. A terrifying idea. It brought her to a halt on the stairs completely, hands gripping the side rails, holding her breath.

What if she-

What if she asked Victoria to finally come to the Two Whales with her? 

 

Oh jeez. Well, that certainly would be carping the diem. It's a dumb idea. It's really stupid. Victoria would just shoot it down - but would she? Max deliberated, taking a step up, then a step back down, then a step up again. 

A random dude gave her a weird look as he passed her going up the stairs. She gave him an awkward wave.

 

Her hand. Of course. She could always rewind. 

 

It's fine, she thought, holding her precious wrist protectively. I've got a cheat code. I can do it. I can ask Victoria to come get dinner with me and Chloe. If Chloe's there, it won't be a date, right?

 

She took a deep breath. Then another, and finally a third for good measure. 

You got this. You  _ got _ this, Super Max.

 

She went back to where Victoria was sitting- oh god Courtney and Taylor were still there. There's no way Max can ask Victoria anything when her friends are there too. If only there were a way to separate them, to get a second alone with Victoria. 

Think Max, think. Really think-

 

///

 

“So I was talking to Justin and he says-”

“Victoria, oh god, there's a spider on your back-”

“WHERE-”

 

<<<

 

“So I was talking to Justin-”

“WHO TURNED THE SPRINKLERS ON??”

“NOT AGAIN! MY NEW SWEATER!”

 

<<<<

 

“So I was talking to-”

“Can... can you smell smoke?”

“COURTNEY YOUR SKIRT IS ON FIRE-”

 

<<<<<

 

“So I was-”

“WHERE DID THIS SWARM OF BEES COME FROM?”

 

<<<<<<

 

Victoria settled down on the step, happy to share the gory details of her run in with the resident skate dudes.

“So I was talking to Justin and he says... Jesus, Max, what the fuck happened to you?”

Max stood before Victoria, her shirt wet from the fountain of red blood pouring from her nose, one hand bright red from a bee sting, soaking wet yet somehow singed slightly at the edges. Her face was pale and sweaty, her sneakers were covered in mud, and she had somehow managed to get cobwebs in her hair.

“It's a long story,” Max croaked.

“Did you get in a fight?” Victoria looked her up and down. “With... a bunch of bees? Courtney, Taylor, go to my room and fetch the bee sting salve. We've got the god damn Elephant Man on our hands here.”

Max watched them go, wide eyed, before muttering “are you fucking kidding me? That's all it took?” in some dangerously exasperated tones.

“Sit, you wild animal,” Victoria commanded, and Max obediently sat beside her, wincing slightly. Victoria couldn't help but feel sorry for her. “It isn't even raining any more. How did you end up...?”

“Dinner?” Max said, in a strangled voice. Victoria froze.

“Excuse me?”

“Tonight?”

“You just- you just said dinner, I don't know what that means-”

“Two Whales. Cool.” Max staggered upwards, which definitely looked like a bad idea. “BRB, gotta go faint in the showers.”

“Max, you're delusional!” As Max staggered towards the dorms with a pronounced limp, Victoria yelled after her: “You're so... weird! Just- take care of yourself!”

Victoria immediately covered her mouth and looked around, heart plummeting. No witnesses? No witnesses. Word couldn't get out that Victoria actually cared about Max. That would be disastrous. But something disastrous had happened to Max, clearly, and Victoria was worried despite every spiteful nerve of hers telling her not to be. Yes, she was worried. Max had wormed her infectious snakey way into Victoria's heart. Her infectious, sweet, waifish way into Victoria's bitter shriveled heart.

Wait, what had Max just said to her?

 

Courtney and Taylor soon reappeared. 

“We've got the- where did she go?”

“Did you take her to the nurse?” 

Victoria just bit her thumbnail anxiously, gazing into the middle distance. “I think...”

Taylor nodded. “Unusual, but go on.”

Victoria didn't give her a snappy comeback, making Taylor and Courtney swap worried glances. 

“... I think she asked me on a date.”

“You useless lesbian,” Taylor cried out. “I swear to god we're going to find her dead from anaphylactic shock and you're going to be- swooning in sapphic uselessness-”

Courtney looked extremely out of her depth. “I'm gonna go give this to Max. Taylor, just, uh, you deal with...” 

She waggled her eyebrows at the pensive form of Victoria and hurried away. 

 

Max winced as she swayed in front of the bathroom mirror, hand sore, face sore, but her head was especially sore - a deep pressure throb that threatened to bring her to her knees. Note to Max: lots of time stuff in a rush equals bad. Don't do it. She gingerly poked the lump around her eye, immensely regretting the swarm of bees plan (or, as she had termed it, Plan B). God. All that bullshit. Why couldn't she have just... said it? 

It would have saved so much time. 

She snorted and dabbed uselessly at her nose bleed with some toilet roll, mad at herself for not just doing the normal person thing and not being mortally afraid of human interaction.

Look at you, she thought uncharitably as she examined her pitiful reflection. You can't do anything without your superpower. You can't even ask a girl on a date. What would it be like if things went back to how they were before?

She clasped her wrist protectively. No. Things were worse back then. She needed time powers. She was at a disadvantage to everyone else anyway, being so awkward and stupid. She needed the powers just to keep up, just to fit in, just to undo the silly mistakes which piled up so fast and showed her for the lonely idiot she really was-

 

“Uh, hey.” 

The girl who Max remembered the name of only half the time appeared at the door, interrupting the somewhat uncomfortable repartee she had established with her own reflection. Sheesh, Max, chill a little. 

“Hi,” Max said, hand massaging her forehead. 

“You need a hand?”

“I should be okay,” she said, though it didn't sound reassuring. Courtney ignored the waver in Max's voice anyway. 

“I have the salve. Here.” She tossed it into the sink nearest to Max ungraciously, glowering at being made to cosset over an entirely new person, not just Victoria. Max opened the bottle and gently started treating the swelling, letting out little hisses and winces, but Courtney was entirely unsympathetic. 

“Thanks,” Max finally said, and Courtney rolled her eyes. 

“Just doing as the Queen of Sheba demands. Oh Courtney, do my homework. Courtney, bring me a soda. I'm not her slave. I'm not gonna nurse your hand better.”

Max wasn't sure what to say, so she just kept uncomfortably putting on the salve. 

“And I used to think it was worth it to avoid all the shit that happens to losers like you. But then look what happened: now she's chasing after you all the time and making me do errands for you too. Are you kidding me? I'm tired of it.” 

Max just watched her, eyes wide.

“I'm tired of running round for her!* Courtney’s brows furrowed and she balled her fists up. “The next time Victoria asks me to do something I'm gonna say- I'm gonna say-”

“Courtney, move out of the way!” Victoria demanded in a loud voice as she barged into the bathroom, and Courtney’s head dropped as she said “yes Victoria” and left. 

“Hey, hang on, wait-” Max heard her say from the hall, but the door shut on her and she didn't come back in. That left just her and Victoria. 

“You!” Victoria said loudly, pointing at Max. 

Max gripped the sink. “M- me?”

“You asked me!”

Max gulped.

“On a date! A  _ date _ !”

“It's just- it's just dinner-”

“ _ You _ , Maxine Caulfield, asked  _ me _ to go on a date- at the fucking  _ Two Whales Diner _ . How  _ dare _ you.”

“It-” Max took a deep breath. “It's a good diner! It does good food!”

“ _ Good food?” _

“Yeah! Waffles and stuff!”

Victoria looked disgusted. “Waffles?  _ Waffles _ ?”

“Look, do you want me to take you out for dinner or not?” Max finally said, desperately, her head pounding. There was a moment of soft dangerous silence. 

“Fine,” Victoria finally deigned to acquiesce. “Two Whales. If only so I can show you how real dining is meant to look later on and embarrass you horribly.”

“That-” Max began, but stopped. “Wait, like a second date?”

“I’ll be at your door in half an hour sharp. Dress nicely or I'm going staying here.” Victoria replied quickly, before turning on her heel and striding off. 

 

Max felt like she had been put through an emotional washing machine. 

Her first thoughts were: screw it! Victoria was so rude. The date was off. What a snarky bitch.

Her second thoughts were: it's a date! A date! With Victoria! A real date! 

Somewhere in the middle of that mess was the general anxiety of suddenly realising it's a date and she has no nice clothes, the giddy excitement of going on a date with Victoria Chase of all people, the righteous indignation that usually accompanied a conversation with Victoria Chase, and the barely there, barely real confidence that Victoria, maybe, really wanted to do this too. That maybe it would be fine. Fun, even. 

Realising she was wasting precious time, Max scrambled to run for her room. Shit, she had better get a move on. 

 

///

 

She really did have nothing to wear.

 

SENT: Chloe, I need help. 

SENT: IMG08_1637.jpg sent

SENT: Here's my wardrobe. I need a classy outfit that says casual but not lazy. All I have is t-shirts and jeans. Why do I only have t-shirts and jeans?

SENT: This is urgent. Please reply soon or I will die. 

 

Black jeans? The nicest pair she owned. Nice tops? God she had nothing-

 

TEXT: calm down max take a chill pill

TEXT: you need to relax

TEXT: what about like a skirt or a summer dress

 

Max nearly dropped the phone in despair. She didn't do skirts or dresses, not if she didn't have to. They felt wrong and uncomfortable and she didn't know what to do. 

 

SENT: I'm screwed.

 

TEXT: jesus max you dont have to dress up fancy for some waffles with me

 

SENT: I, uh.

 

TEXT: max what did you do

 

SENT: I invited Victoria to come with me tonight.

SENT: To the Two Whales.

 

TEXT: LIKE A DATE?

 

SENT: Maybe???? (˃̩̩̥ɷ˂̩̩̥)

 

TEXT: YOU INVITED TORI THE TORY TO OUR DINNER AND NOW YOURE USING EMOJI ON ME

TEXT: FOR SHAME 

TEXT: okay change of plan broski

TEXT: bring queen bee to the two whales and take a window seat dont wait up for me and SIT FACING THE DOOR

 

SENT: But why?

 

TEXT: NO QUESTIONS JUST DO IT IF YOU WANT TO LIVE

 

///

 

In the end, Max found an old button up shirt in a fancy deer print and some clean(ish) black jeans, which seemed fancy enough for Victoria and definitely too fancy for the Two Whales. Her cleanest sneakers, an old necklace, a spritz of deodorant and some perfume and she was ready to go. 

She brushed her hair twice for good measure, gave her teeth a quick clean and splashed her face a bit, wishing she knew how to do make up but knowing she'd just mess it up if she tried. 

 

Outside, it thundered. Max sat by her window, trying to get her nerves back under control, and watched the tempest wage on outside. The window panes rattled with rain. White flashes shredded through the sky. 

 

There was a knock at her door. She jumped, feeling entirely unready, took a deep break, smoothed out her shirt and opened the door just as a crack of thunder and lightning lit up the room. 

Victoria stood just behind it, in a crushed velvet maroon dress and a denim jacket, looking sharp as hell and gazing down at Max with a critiquing eye. 

“Not bad,” she drawled. “You're just missing that oh so quirky bow tie, to complete that Matt Smith wannabe look. Are you starting a vlog now? Please don't tell me you've been learning ukulele.”

Max blushed. “I was trying to be fancy.”

“I'm kidding. You look fancy.” Victoria held out a hand and gestured that Max should follow, leading the way into the dark hall. “Come on, before someone catches us in the hall.”

Max nervously followed, half hopeful someone would peek out and see Victoria looking so... so fucking hot, honestly. She looked fantastic. Max couldn't believe they were on a date. Well, a dinner. Not really a date. Probably. 

 

The nerves kept pushing at her. Her hands shook. This was too much to handle, the idea of having to impress such a pretty, intimidating girl. 

 

“Are we- are we catching a bus?”

 

Victoria whirled round with such a look of disgust and disdain that Max raised her hand in sheer self preservation. 

 

<<<

 

“Let me just get us an uber,” Max amended, and Victoria seemed much more pleased with that idea.

“Thank God,” she said as they stood by the doors to the courtyard, watching the rain pelt down. “If you had suggested walking in this weather I would have bailed immediately.”

“Haha, yeah,” Max said weakly. 

 

///

 

They bundled out of the uber and into the Two Whales quickly. Victoria covered her head with her jacket and Max braved it alone, and their shoes squeaked on the clean but cheap linoleum when they entered. 

“Ah- let me pick us a table,” Max quickly said, remembering Chloe's instructions, and also to distract Victoria from the less-than-classy interior of the cafeteria. It was nice in here, especially now the windows had fogged just a little against the intemperate weather, and the lights were set on soft and low, and the jukebox played something slow and sweet for once. It just wasn't... classy. 

 

Max maneuvered them to a table in the middle by a window-

Victoria grimaced.

 

<<<

 

Max maneuvered them to the table at the very end, placing Victoria facing away from the door but by the window. Max sat opposite her, heart thumping. 

“So, you finally managed to drag me in here,” Victoria said, tracing circles on the tabletop. “I hope the food is as good as you say it is.”

“Of course it is. I don't just come here to say hi to Grace.”

“Who?” Victoria swung a cool eye to the counter where Grace was just appearing with a coffee jug in hand. “Oh, the waitress? Is she that girl's mom - Chloe, right?”

“Right,” Max affirmed with a smile. “She's been kind to me for as long as she's known me. Which is a long time.”

Victoria seemed quiet, just watching Grace and taking in that information. Finally she spoke.

“Well, it isn't as grody as I thought it was. The table isn't sticky. And the music isn't unlistenable.”

Max found herself giggling suddenly, and Victoria stiffened and said “what?”

“It's just... when you're trying to be nice about something. You say all the things it isn't, rather than what it is. It's not dirty, it's not outdated...”

“Oh, it is absolutely outdated.” Victoria thought for a second. “It's retro. Kitsch.”

Max rolled her eyes and laughed. “I guess your parents didn't take you to a lot of dives when you were growing up?”

Victoria's eyes hardened. “We didn't do... family trips out. Surprise. There's a lot of places they didn't take me.”

“That sounds... rough.”

“Don't pity me!”

 

<<<

 

“It's retro. Kitsch.”

Max smiled and nodded her agreement, and Victoria seemed put off for a second, as if expecting disagreement that didn't come. 

Oh god, this date was going to involve a lot of rewinding, wasn't it. 

 

Behind Victoria, the door jingled, and Max watched as a teenage girl in a large coat and a baseball cap pulled down low took a seat facing their table. 

Was that-

“Chloe?” Max involuntarily said out loud, and Victoria whirled round and immediately spotted the suspicious figure.

“Is she spying on us? Max, is this some sort of sick prank-?”

 

<<<

 

Behind Victoria, the door jingled, and Max watched as a teenage girl in a large coat and a baseball cap pulled down low took a seat facing their table.

Max subtly glanced at Chloe's disguised figure - big sun glasses, a neck scarf from god knows who, even a pair of gloves. If there were any way to appear more suspicious, Max didn't know how, except to maybe hang a flashing neon sign above her saying 'don't notice me!’. 

“Uh, Earth to Max, I was asking what you were thinking of ordering.”

Max tore her eyes away from Chloe - who was throwing her complicated hand gestures and eyebrow waggles - to the menu, which she already knew practically by heart.

“The bacon stack of pancakes,” she finally said. “I recommend it.”

“Ugh, cholesterol galore,” Victoria choked. Max shook her head.

“It's tasty, and life is short. Why don't you get it too?”

“I'm on a diet, you myopic-”

 

<<<

 

“It's tasty, and life is short.” Max tried a different approach. “The healthiest thing they do here is... the veggie bun I think, if you're looking to cut carbs.”

“Are you saying I need to lose weight?” Victoria said sharply-

 

<<<

 

Max gripped her head, feeling a wave of pressure building. Whoops. 

“It's tasty, and life is short,” she finally said, but now Victoria was looking at her with worry, maybe, or maybe just vague irritation that she dare get a migraine at such an inopportune moment.

“Max,” Victoria began, but was interrupted by the approach of Joyce, who smiled widely at Max.

“Well hey, Max. Say, I thought you and Chloe were going out tonight - why's she sitting over there on her lonesome? You guys have a fight?”

“Joyce, I love you but you're giving me a huge headache,” Max said entirely truthfully, and rewound time just as Joyce's expression widened in shock.

 

///

 

From her hidden seat behind Victoria, Chloe had a great view of the action. So far, things seemed to have been going smoothly - really smoothly. Victoria hadn't stormed off yet in an offended huff. Max hadn't stalled, stuttered, blanked or even turned bright red - actually, she looked a little pale. But that was probably to be expected. 

Chloe wasn't entirely sure that she herself would want to go on a date with the stuck up high school bully, but Max was her best friend and unfortunately that meant sticking up for her in all of her weird and wonderful scrapes. In this case, looking out meant a kickin’ disguise and a bitchin set of shades, and a free cup of coffee from her mom, so the actual strain on her beat friendly duties was considerably light. Max seemed to have it covered. 

Maybe she'd check in on that in 5 minutes.

 

///

 

“So that's a bacon stack, a half stack with fruit, two sodas one full one diet, and some fries to share for you and the lovely stranger.” Joyce marked off each item on her list, tipping Victoria a wink. “You're all dressed up and she took you to this little old place? For shame, Max.”

“Apparently I owe her a dinner here from some stupid bet a while back,” Victoria said, only whining a little bit. 

“Hey, I like this place!” Max said hotly. “Plus I'm in with the head waitress so I always get amazing service.”

“Careful, I'll think you're just buttering me up for extra servings,” Joyce laughed. “What's your name, darling?”

Victoria was gazing at Joyce in a way Max wasn't sure she liked, half amusement and half mockery, as if watching a splendid animal performing tricks. “Victoria,” she said, tilting her head. 

Joyce frowned a little. “Victoria... you one of the Chases?”

“Yes. Why?”

Something in Joyce seemed a little less friendly, a little more guarded. “You're pals with Nathan, I remember.”

“So?” Victoria turned red. “What, you think I'm going to start a fight in this dump? Think I'm going to eat and run?”

“Max, I thought you were a good influence on Chloe,” Joyce said, turning to Max in a way that was clearly cutting Victoria off. “Have you been getting in with a bad sort? I don't know if I want you bringing these kids into my restaurant. They just bring trouble.”

“It's not really a restaurant, is it?” Victoria interjected, furious and cold. “It's a greasy spoon with a bunch of clichéd decorations that look like you dumpster dived them-”

“This isn't how I wanted this to go,” Max said, and raised her hand.

 

<<<<<

 

Chloe watched in awe as Max somehow deftfully avoided Joyce finding out who Victoria was. It was amazing. A well timed interjection, the dropping of a spoon, even a coughing fit - in one smooth, unbroken interaction, Chloe watched as the danger was averted at every turn. Her best friend was an unruffled charisma machine, and honestly, it was kind of terrifying and maybe a little bit of a turn on. 

Joyce set down another cup of coffee by her.

“Why are you sat over here anyway?”

Chloe shrugged. “Classified. Get off my back, you're gonna alert their suspicion.”

“Could stand to be nicer to the person who's giving you free coffee and a free seat during dinner service,” Joyce replied breezily, before heading back to the kitchen.

 

///

 

Max was in hell. Max was in actual hell, and not the cool gay kind, but the headache blurred vision social anxiety kind. It had gotten bad, real bad. She was absolutely convinced that Victoria was having an awful time. The curl of her lip, the way she seemed frustrated more and more as time went on despite Max's best efforts to appear as smooth and sociable as possible, and of course her hand was flying up at the slightest provocation. 

It didn't help that Victoria was giving her some serious nerves. She was so pretty but so so hard to talk to. 

“H-hey, it's kind of a relief to have that project handed in, right?”

Victoria stiffened, expression closing off. “Yes. Such a relief to not have to work together after this, right?”

“Well, I meant, no, I meant the-”

The jukebox started screeching loudly with a rambunctious country guitar song, overdrive and volume turned up to 11, and Max bit her own tongue. 

“I can't hear you!” Victoria yelled. 

Max swore.

 

<<<<

 

Max jumped away from the table and stuck a bunch of spare change into the jukebox before the shambling man could play his loud guitar music. There wasn't much to choose from - mainly the kind of stuff you'd find in a vintage 50s diner - and her sweaty fingers were slipping over the keys. 

She punched in some songs from the “smooth” section, hesitating a second in case she needed to rewind-

 

No, it was fine. A gentle song started playing, quite of and entirely at odds with her frenetic mood, but definitely suitable date music.

She slid back into her seat to find Victoria staring at her.

“You ran off mid-sentence. Was this song really that urgent?”

“Uhh,” faltered Max, before shrugging. “Sorry. I was just seized by the moment, haha.”

“You look terrible. You look like you're about to pass out. Are you ill or something?” Victoria reached out a hand to press against Max's sweaty forehead, which did nothing to decrease the building fever she was gradually working up. 

“No, no, I'm fine. I'm really enjoying this.” Max hoped she sounded convincing. Victoria just frowned deeper, so Max quickly said “hey, this weather is awful. It's almost apocalyptic out there.”

Victoria turned and watched the rain streaming down the window, the flashes of lightning. “You know, I kind of like it. Makes me wonder if it's going to flood this whole place away.”

“... you really don't like it here, do you.”

Victoria sighed and closed her eyes. “I feel... I feel like I'm trapped in a goldfish bowl. I've been here for so long and everyone knows me and knows who I am, and everyone's got an opinion on that. I just want... I want to go somewhere exciting. Somewhere vibrant. I want to go to the city.”

Max touched her arm gently and her eyes flew open.

“I think the city would suit you,” Max said quietly. “You're a very vibrant and exciting kind of person too.”

And Victoria- Victoria opened her mouth to speak, but let out a startled scream. Max jumped. 

“Oh, fuck, fuck, holy shit, that burns!” Victoria yelled, and Max realised there were burning hot pancakes in Victoria's lap, and a very mortified Joyce holding a plate in her hand but no pancakes because they had somehow slipped off the plate and right into Victoria's lap-

it was steaming horribly, she was hissing with pain-

 

<<<<<

 

Victoria turned and watched the rain streaming down the window, the flashes of lightning. “You know, I kind of like it. Makes me wonder if it's going to-”

Max set her head down on the table and took some deep breaths. The pain was sharp. She hadn't pushed her abilities this far in a long time. 

“... Max? Max? Are you high? Did you take something weird?”

There was no time to talk. She forced her head back up with a gentle, fake smile and watched Joyce approach.

“Hey, let me take those,” she said, and extended a hand to take the plate off her.

“Careful. It's hot.” 

“Oh, I know.” Max set down the pancakes carefully. No scalded laps this time. 

“Thank you,” she said with relief, almost missing the frustrated expression on Victoria's face.

 

/// 

 

Chloe watched them eat avidly. Max seemed to be struggling - her bites were slow and timid, more so than usual, and she seemed distracted and worried. She needed to lighten up. She needed a bathroom break. 

They ate their meal in complete peace. Well, that was how it seemed to Chloe, who chugged more coffee and stared at the back of Victoria's head.

Max looked real rough. It was time.

 

SENT: max, bathroom, 1 minute. meet me in there 

 

Chloe saw Max jump as she got the text, frown, and exchange some quiet, indeterminable words with Victoria. Then she hopped off the stool and went to the bathroom, sitting in a stall and waiting.

 

A minute later, Max appeared, looking in each stall curiously til she found Chloe.

“What is it?” she half-whispered. “What's wrong?”

“So, how's it going?” Chloe sang, waggling her eyebrows. “Is she having fun?”

“I don't know,” Max said, leaning against the sink and turning on the faucet to quickly wet her face. “I'm too stressed out. Oh god. Do you have any painkillers?”

“Painkillers? What's going on?”

“It's my head,” Max groaned, resorting to leaning her face on the cool but grimy mirror, leaving little blurry smear marks behind. “It really hurts. My entire body feels like it's going to rip apart at the seams.”

“Holy shit. Why are you on a date if you're ill?”

“I wasn't ill before.” She sighed. “It's my... you know.” Her hand waved vaguely in the air. “My powers.”

“Don't those only hurt when you use them too much-” Chloe began, before realising. “Deep fucksauce Max, how much have you been messing with time on this date??”

“A lot,” Max admitted. “But I have to. Otherwise she's gonna... not want to be on a date with me. Do you know how many incidents I've avoided while being here?”

“You're gonna cause yourself a brain haemorrhage! Jesus, Max, you look like you're going to faint!”

“I'll be fine. I promise. I have to go otherwise she's gonna get suspicious. Just- don't worry, okay? I've got this.”

With that, Max stumbled out of the bathroom and back to Victoria, and Chloe watched in alarm as she slumped into her seat. Stupid, stupid Max. Why did she have to try and kill herself over a dumb date?

 

///

 

“That was, actually... not half bad,” Victoria said as she finished off her last strawberry. “Not quite Michelin gourmet but. It was tasty.”

“I hate to say I told you so, but...” teased Max. “One fry left. You want it?”

“I suppose one more can't do much more damage than you've already done to the last dregs of my diet.”

As Victoria demurely ate the chip, Max shook her head. “Maybe I should try eating healthy too. I just really, really love Joyce's cooking.”

“Max, please. If you lost any weight you'd look like you'd break in a strong wind.” Victoria sat back with not quite a smile, but definitely a contented look. 

“I dunno.” Max shifted uncomfortably. “Now I feel weird about wanting ice cream for dessert.”

“Excuse me, who's paying here? Who said we were having dessert?”

“Oh, I. I thought that was a joke,” Max said, face colouring, but Victoria didn't look angry.

“Mais non, mon petit-field. I lost that bet. Somehow.” Her eyes narrowed and Max gulped as she trailed off into dangerous territory. “How did you know what colour my underwear was, anyway? You've been acting so weird lately.”

“Lucky guess?” Max tried, nervously. Victoria shook her head.

“Nope. You knew.” Now she smiled, in a sly way, and tilted her head at Max. “Have you been rifling through my underwear drawer?”

“Wh- what?” Max's face, if possible, went even redder. 

“Sneaking a little peek at me when I change in the showers?”

“N- n- no!”

“Been winding that photographic eye through the key hole when I get undressed?”

“No, I swear!”

Victoria's foot rested gently, dangerously against Max's ankle. Max felt faint. This was something that happened to people in movies, not to Maxine Caulfield in her best friend's mom's diner while Dolly Parton played in the background. Lightning struck, not far away. The thunder was deafeningly loud, the flash blindingly light. 

“I'm just teasing. I know you're way too square to do anything exciting like that.” The foot kicked her gently. “So what is it? I know - I just know you're hiding the truth from me. I've known for so long but you keep distracting me with your- with your dumb face and your big eyes. No more distractions. Tell me or so help me I'm going to cunt punt you into next Tuesday.”

 

Max had turned white. 

How was she supposed to tell Victoria that the girl she was eating with, was flirting with, had been hanging out with for weeks, was actually an elaborate lie? That Max, the real Max, was hidden deep behind fifty or so alternative universes where she wasn't so smooth or ready or cool, where she was a second too late or a fraction too slow, the old unlikeable unpopular Max? How could Victoria - mean, quick Victoria, clever as a fox and sharp as broken glass - how could she ever really, truly tolerate pure unadulterated real Max Caulfield? 

 

“I'm not ready,” she croaked.

 

<<<<

 

 

Victoria's foot rested gently, dangerously against Max's ankle.

Max felt something hot and wet fall into her mouth. She touched her lips and they came back red.

“Oh,” said Victoria, looking faintly pleased. “I thought they only did that in anime.”

“Shit, nosebleed,” Max cursed, and quickly used the nearest napkins to wipe away some blood. Her hands were horribly shaky and her vision was blurred from the pain and the pressure, the intolerable pressure of time. A clock hanging nearby, which previously she hadn't noticed, now ticked so loudly that each tock was like a blow to the cranium. Things were getting distorted. Sometimes the words Victoria said were too fast, other times too slow and low pitched. Oh god, it was getting bad.

“I need to go to the bathroom,” Max mumbled, and the floor heaved around her as she tried to exit the booth. Lightning struck, not far away, but the blinding flash and deafening thunder left echoes and after images reverberating through Max's skull. 

“Wait!” Victoria stood up too quickly and in hyperfast motion was supporting Max's body. Max tried to push away - she was going to get blood on Victoria's lovely dress - but she was too wobbly, and Victoria had a vice like grip on her shoulders stopping her from toppling over. Max's leg gave out, and her face was stuck against Victoria's collarbone. She could taste the perfume rather than smell it, a grounding acrid unpleasantness. Gross gross gross. She was getting her grody nose blood on Victoria. She was going to be so angry with Max. 

“Max!” called Chloe across the bar, and Joyce was coming too.

Max feebly tried to raise her hand. If she could go back and change it. If she could go back and stop Victoria's dress from being covered in her nose bleed juice. It would be okay, if she could just go back-

 

< </<

 

“Max!” called Chloe from across the bar, and Joyce was coming too - not far enough -

 

</ / </

 

She could taste the perf//ume rather than < rather than smell it-

 

<// /> /

 

“-ax! Max! >>// // // / ambulance or so help me I'm suing this establishment ba<back to the sto / /ne age-”

 

Then time didn't move at all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> guys i love you so much and i don't really want to end this fic because i'm enjoying it so much
> 
> but don't worry!! i'm gonna keep writing, i just don't know what yet! what do you guys wanna see more of? i was thinking about maybe an older chasefield fic like when they're adults. any other fandoms you guys like? anybody here like the adventure zone? 
> 
> one more chapter! i think! it's all wrapping up! ahhhh


End file.
